Adventures in Arabic, Part II

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Katrina Spencer

Welcome back, Arabophiles! And thank you for joining us at Glocal Notes for the second edition of “Adventures in Arabic.” As promised, this week we will share “Ways To Cope with Difficulty” and “Miscellany.”

As always with this blog, one of our most pertinent goals is to make you more aware of the resources that we have in our library and on campus to help you with your needs. These resources come in many forms. Among them are the print, the digital, the human, the interdepartmental, and the ones that go beyond the borders of our university. Shall we take a tour?

WAYS TO COPE WITH DIFFICULTY

A screenshot of the homepage of the International and Area Studies Library’s portal to materials and research strategies pertaining to the Middle East & North Africa. Found at http://www.library.illinois.edu/ias/middleeasterncollection/index.html.

Print & Digital Resources

As mentioned in Part I, in Arabic class here at UIUC we use a text book called Alif Baa by Kristen Brustad and her colleagues. Aside from occasional dalliances with Google Translate’s pronunciation function, I’ve found the text to be quite sufficient as a learning tool. What’s more, it is accompanied by a compact disc which holds the class’ listening exercises and videos that demonstrate how the script is written.

However, if a beginner were interested in complementary texts, one might consult the call number ranges or addresses that indicate where print reference materials are held in our library. Don’t know where those are? No problem. That’s why we have lib guides. Our University Library is a big proponent of lib guides, which are concentrated, digital resources designed around a theme and meant to help you find what you need when you need it. Here are four that pertain to learning about the Arab world and the Arabic language:

Human Resources

But there’s more!

Professor Laila Hussein is the Middle East and North African Studies Librarian at the University Library. Specifically, Professor Hussein works at this blog’s home unit, the International and Area Studies Library. She can help you find sources for your term papers, tell you about the Bibliography of Africa course and, as a native speaker of Arabic, discuss how Modern Standard Arabic differs from regional dialects. She recently published a piece about her broader work in the American Library Association’s International Leads.

Professor Kenneth Cuno is the campus’ local expert on most things Egyptian. He has spent decades studying Egyptian society and culture to come to a better understanding of how the country and its people link their ancient and pharaonic past to the present and its political uprisings. His courses this semester focus on modern Egyptian history and mutable concepts of family over time. His recent publications include Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Egypt and Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire.

Dr. Eman Saadah is the director of the Arabic Language Program. In addition to coordinating the multiple sections of beginning Arabic courses, she is the official faculty chaperone for students traveling in the winter study abroad program to Jordan. She coordinates an annual 3-week trip for students interested in visiting the Middle East. Moreover, if you’re studying Arabic, you can write to her and ask about the weekly conversation tables held on Thursdays in La Casa on Nevada Street at 4:00 p.m. that discuss modern issues in Muslim-majority countries.

Angela Williams is the Associate Director of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES). She is a doctoral candidate in the Education, Policy, Organization and Leadership program. Aside from being a competent Arabic speaker, she is also studying Persian.

Interdepartmental Resources

A screenshot of the University of Illinois' Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies website's home page.

A screenshot of the University of Illinois’ Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES) website’s home page.

The Center for African Studies (CAS), the Center for Global Studies (CGS), and the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES), and the European Union Center (EUC) have affiliated professors who offer a variety of courses pertaining to the Arabic-speaking world. Moreover, these three centers host a series of events and talks that shed light on multiple topics, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and development efforts in Sub-Saharan African countries. There are also regular Iranian tea times at these campus cultural houses. To sign up for the Center for African Studies’ weekly newsletter, delivered by e-mail, write to Terri Gitler (tgitler@illinois.edu); to be included on the Center for Global Studies listserv, complete this form; and for CSAMES’ email list, click this link and fill out the form.

The Summer Institute of Languages of the Muslim World (SILMW) is native to our campus and is currently run by Dr. Eman Saadah. She is from Jordan and teaches Arabic during the eight weeks of the summer term. In addition to intensive courses, the program offers cultural workshops and field trips to help introduce students to Islamic cultures. Also, if you recall the federally funded fellowship mentioned in Part I of this post, also known as the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship, SILMW is FLAS-eligible and offers up to seven different languages for study, including Arabic.

Outside Academic Resources

Middlebury College offers intensive study every summer for eleven modern languages. Arabic is offered at its California campus site and is eligible for the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) federal award.

Arabic at Stanford: If you’re feeling a bit shaky writing and pronouncing your letters, this nifty website can help you to perfect scribing and vocalizing the Arabic script.

Georgetown University: This page tells you what makes learning the Arabic language challenging for native speakers of English.

Middlebury College: If you’re looking for an immersive experience, but can’t quite make it abroad, you might consider Middlebury College’s Language Schools. At Middlebury, you can join a summer-long program in which you sign a Language Pledge and communicate almost exclusively in your target language for the duration of the summer term. In addition to courses, there are extracurricular activities that are all conducted in the target language, including theater, cooking, sports, poetry, and more. A total of eleven modern languages are taught through the Middlebury College Language Schools: nine are offered on the Vermont campus and two, including Arabic, are offered every summer in California. As with SILMW, these programs are also FLAS-eligible.

Around the Web

Thankfully, learning Arabic isn’t all about dictionaries, papers and tests. It is also about humor, travel, struggles, pronunciation, sharing, solidarity, culture, and community. When you’re not sounding out your alif tanwins, deciphering your waslas and choosing your proper kursis, you can check out these pages that will speak intimately to your challenges and successes:

This BuzzFeed listicle: 39 Things Only Americans Who Study Arabic Will Understand
This Facebook page: University of Illinois Arabic Program
This Tumblr: #arabicproblems
Youtube channels: ArabicPod101 and ArabicAnywhere.

MISCELLANY

A female student wearing a hijab. Photo Credit: Tahir Ansari

What’s required vs. what’s necessary

I’ve come to think of my relationship with Arabic much like any long-term one that I might have with another person; I’ve found that when I put in the time, energy, and attention for working on Arabic, peace, harmony and good tidings are my rewards. When I don’t, there’s discord, anxiety and friction between us. Knowing this, doing “just enough to get by” isn’t the best approach in creating a strong foundation for a lasting love. This frequently means requiring more of myself than what is recommended. Doubly more. As a friend of mine likes to say, “The struggle is real.”

This is my first time having an instructor who is a hijabi*.

As far as I can tell, what my instructor wears has had no bearing on the efficacy of her teaching. As a Westerner and a feminist, I’ve been exposed to schools of thought that suggest the garment is outrightly oppressive. However, writing off the cultural practice entirely without hearing from the people who respect it would be unjust. As the many think-pieces published on various Internet platforms state, a hijab does not equate to oppression just as a bikini does not equate to freedom. When we assign definitive meanings to garments, we limit the dialogues we can engage about them. Interestingly, recent news articles seem to suggest that the hijab is taking a strong foothold in the mainstream. See a Muslim policewoman’s uniform in Minnesota and a retail model’s attire for H&M. It would seem that fewer and fewer preconceptions about the covering are true.

There are heritage speakers in class.

In language pedagogy courses, new instructors are taught that there are “true beginners” and “false beginners.” True beginners have had zero to little meaningful contact with the target language being taught. False beginners are learners who may have taken the language years ago and have significant gaps in their history of learning. Or, a false beginner could be a heritage speaker who has spoken the target language for years at home but has insufficient experience in terms of reading and writing it. The heritage speakers, it seems, ask fewer questions and make fewer comments. This may be because the basic principles of the language come more easily and/or naturally to them based on their more personal experiences.

I still can’t write my name.

At the time I started writing this post, the statement written just above was true. It took me about four weeks to learn to write my name. This isn’t because my name is inherently difficult or that I’m painfully slow at picking up grammar cues. It is because the letters “k” and “n” come rather late in the abjad (alphabet) – “N” is the fourth to last. It may, then, take 20 class meetings before you can use the Arabic script to write your name, and even more than that if you’re a Henry, Harold, Heather, or Helen, as “H” is the last consonant of the alphabet. Here are some of the names I learned to write rather early: Rashid, Sara, and Tabatha.

This is not something you do for “fun.”

Over the course of my foreign language learning career, I have noticed that there are some languages that students from the United States approach casually. We say, “I’m going to brush up on my [fill in the language of your choice here].” Or, “I used to study [fill in the language of your choice here] in high school.” These languages tend to represent cultures that are nearer to the U.S. geographically and ideologically than the Middle East. Arabic is not one of these languages.

If you are American, chances are that there were no cable channels in your home that featured the Arabic language. Chances are that your local grocery chain didn’t have a specific marketing campaign to celebrate an Islamic holiday. Chances are, if you’re from the U.S., your favorite pop station isn’t regularly mixing Arabic-infused songs into its daily rotation. My point is this: Different languages and cultures are portrayed in different contexts in the United States. While Arabic class is fun, it’s also demanding, informative, challenging and rewarding. One thing it is definitely not, however, is an “easy A” for a Western, non-native/non-heritage speaker.

With this course, time must be carved out minimally five days a week for attentive practice. More than anything, this teaches me to moderate my expectations. If by the end of the semester I can…

politely and warmly greet people from the Maghreb, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula
introduce myself properly and respectfully
pronounce vowelled texts
count to one hundred
state the colors
know the days of the week and months of the year
name common food items
talk about the weather
and mention how I’m feeling…

I will be content.

If you didn’t catch Part I of this series last week, click here to go back in time, and be sure to follow our page on Facebook for more posts like this one.

Multiple types of marinated olives, a common food eaten in the Mediterranean. Photo Credit: Speleolog from Flickr

Multiple types of marinated olives, a common food item eaten in the Mediterranean world. Photo Credit: Speleolog

*Mini-glossary of terms

abjad: The Arabic alphabet, which relies exclusively on consonants; most vowels are largely excluded from the script in writing.

hijabi: Any Muslim woman who wears a hijab, a covering for the hair, head, and upper body.

kursi: Literally “chair,” “throne,” “seat” or “stool.” In grammatical terms, the kursi is a written symbol upon which the Hamza (ء) sits but has no pronounced vowel.

Marhaba!: “Hello!”

Mumtaaz!: “Excellent!”

taliib (masc.)/taliibah (fem.): seeker of knowledge (“student”)

tanwiin: A grammatical term that refers to three different diacritical marks that indicate that a word ends in the sounds “-an,” “-in” or “-un”

Tasharrafna!: “Nice to meet you!”

ustaad (masc.)/ustada (fem.): teacher

waajib: homework

wasla: A diacritical mark (ٱ) that indicates the sound Hamza should be elided or suppressed in pronunciation

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Adventures in Arabic, Part I

Posted on September 29, 2015 by Katrina Spencer

The Arabic alphabet or abjad* of 28 letters, read from right to left. (See glossary for asterisked items.)

After more than a decade of study, it’s safe to say that I’m a pretty experienced language learner. To me, languages are a medium for learning more about neighbors, those near and those far. If you say “direct and indirect object pronouns,” I know what you mean. “Accents and diacritical marks”? Got that, too. “Formal and informal registers?” Yes, I understand. But here’s a series of terms that are altogether new to me:

hamza and glottal stops
teeth and tails
vowelled and unvowelled texts*.

(See the glossary at the end of the article for asterisked items.)

These are all characteristic of the Arabic language, and, before August 24, 2015, the first day of the Fall 2015 term, I had never heard of them.

Thanks to the Center for African Studies and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS), I am on a journey that is not only introducing me to new vocabulary but is taking me on a metaphorical tour of lands I’ve never known. In this two-part blog series, I will review the first month of class meetings my Arabic 201 course has had and introduce you to some potentially new revelations.

The overarching goal of these pieces is to introduce you to print, digital, human and interdepartmental resources available to you in our library and all over campus should you be interested in Arabic, the Middle East, its diaspora, and/or Islam. In the first installment of “Arabic Adventures,” we will cover two topics, each with five themes: “Modern Day Use of the Language” and “Characteristics of the Language.” Be sure to check the Glocal Notes blog next week for “Ways to Cope with Difficulty” and “Miscellany,” in which we will explore more curiosities.

MODERN DAY USE OF THE LANGUAGE

The Farsi (Persian) language written in Arabic script. It reads kaafee shaap, or “coffee shop.” Photo Credit: Rui Abreu

The Arabic script is used to write many different languages.

Just as the Latin script—the one you are currently reading—is used to write many languages like English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and German, the Arabic script is used to write multiple languages as well. That is, the symbols used to write Arabic are the same symbols used to write Persian, Urdu, Pashtu and Kurdish. Combined, there are more than 560 million speakers of these four languages all over the world. Before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish was also written with the Arabic script (Csató 135).

Demand for the language is growing (Conlin)!

Every seat in my classroom is full and has been for four weeks. This surprises me because the class meets five days a week and has handwritten homework due almost every day. Among the undergraduates and graduate students, we even have someone auditing the class. Students want to be there and are very motivated with the language. Moreover, the United States’ government has recognized the importance of developing a multilingual citizenry and has therefore established multiple lines of funding to support committed language learners in their efforts to master other tongues. Among the scholarships and fellowships available are the following:

The Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, available on our campus for Arabic through
The Critical Language Scholarship Program;
and the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program.

There will be an information session regarding the Critical Language Scholarship Program on campus, October 8, 2015 from 3:30- 4:30 at 807 S. Wright St. Floor 5 (Illini Union Bookstore), Room 514. Students of Arabic and 13 other languages are eligible to apply.

An early edition of the textbook Alif Baa by Kristen Brustad used in beginning Arabic classes at the University of Illinois. Photo Credit: Meedan Photos

Variants of the Arabic language are not 100% mutually intelligible.

In our classroom, we use a pair of textbooks titled Alif Baa and Al-Kitaab. (Alif is the first letter of the Arabic abjad* and baa is the second. Kitaab is the word for “book.”) With this text, we learn Modern Standard Arabic, which is also known as fusHa and is understood by most native speakers of Arabic. However, given the wide breadth of people and countries where Arabic is spoken—conservatively, from Morocco to Iran— the variations between and among regional dialects can make communication challenging. For example, as people in the West are infrequently exposed to the Englishes of India and Nigeria, one must accustom him or herself to varying accents and vocabulary in order understand and be understood. Therefore, learning Arabic in a classroom is a beginning on the road to competency and fluency, not an end.

It is a standard practice for Muslims to learn to read Arabic for the purpose of reciting verses from the Koran (Qur’an), the sacred Islamic text.

However, many Muslims do not speak Arabic or use the language outside of religious contexts. For example, one graduate student I know at the U of I is from Bangladesh. She is a practicing Muslim and is able to read the Koran, but beyond the holy book and polite greetings, her knowledge of Arabic as a modern language is limited. Speaking of which, the Koran’s surahs (chapters) can be read and/or heard for free at quran.com and, as with the Bible, multiple sites allow you to order a free copy. The Google search “free qur’an” yields more than 33 million results.

A young girl learns to read the Koran. Photo Credit: Plan Asia

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LANGUAGE

Remnants, vestiges and “fossils” in the language reveal its history of contact with other cultures.

Did you know that Arabs ruled what came to be known as Spain and the Iberian Peninsula for nearly eight centuries? The most commonly cited dates are 711- 1492 A.D. (Watt). Arabs also traded heavily with peoples in East Africa, particularly in places like the Swahili Coast and Dar es Salaam (Horton), which forms part of modern-day Tanzania. Wherever the Arabs went, they left a lasting vocabulary that provides evidence of their travels, influences, cultures and wares. While the words below are not all direct translations, they do reflect origins, roots and terms that have had centuries of comparable use in their respective tongues:

Arabic	Portuguese	Spanish	French	Swahili	English
Insha’aallah!	Oxalá!/Espero	Ojalá!/Espero	J’espère	Insha’aallah!/Natumaini	I hope/God-willing
mi’a	cem	cien	cent	mia	one hundred
qmees	camisa	camisa	chemise	shumizi/kamisi	chemise/shirt
rafeeq	amigo	amigo	ami	rafiki	friend
sukkar	açúcar	azúcar	sucre	sukari	sugar
zeit	azeite	aceite	huile	mafuta ya kupika	cooking oil

A group of Muslim men bowed in prayer and a young boy playing. Photo Credit: Daniel Bayona

A group of Muslim men bowing in prayer as a young boy poses playfully. Photo Credit: Daniel Bayona

Religion is embedded in the language.

If you ask someone of the Arab world in Arabic how he or she is, an appropriate response is “al-Hamdu li-llah,” meaning, “Thank God.” This could mean “I’m great,” “I’m fine,” “I could be better,” “God is merciful” or simply be a verbal enunciation to accompany a shrug. Here is a list of five common, everyday expressions in Arabic that all contain a variant of “Allah,” the Arabic word for and name of God:

Allah!: Wow! What a surprise!
al-Hamdu li-llah: Thank God
Bismi-llaah: In the name of God (said before or upon beginning something)
Insha’aallah: God willing, hopefully
Maa shaa a-llah!: Wow, that’s wonderful/beautiful/adorable! (Brustad 166)

When you think about it, this is not so different from:

God bless you (after a sneeze)
Jesus Christ! You scared me!
Lord, have mercy!
OMG/Oh my God!
TGIF/Thank God it’s Friday!

Right-to-left.

You have probably already heard that Arabic is written from right to left.

.tfel ot thgir morf daer era secnetnes taht snaem osla sihT

Did you catch that?

This also means that sentences are read from right to left.

And organizational paradigms are constructed from right to left. For example, math equations were once carried out as follows:

4 = 2 + 2

7 = 3 – 10

8 = 2\16

Also, when you open a book, its front cover rests in your right hand. If you examine the comic below, note that the text begins in the upper right-hand corner of the right page and ends on the lower left-hand corner of the left page.

A comic written in Arabic. Given the right-to-left reading pattern in Arabic, the panel in the lower left-hand corner of the entire image should be read last. Photo Credit: Maya

Some sounds are entirely foreign, like the letters ع (ayn) and غ (ghayn).

There are no English equivalents for either of them and, therefore, they can represent real challenges in aural perception for native English speakers. In transliteration (Language Library), the ع character appears as a small, elevated “c,” as in the following word for “university”: jaami ͨ a.

A screen shot of the word “university” in English, its Arabic script translation and the ع character circled in red, courtesy of Google Translate.

#BlackDotsMatter

ب ت ث

See those three symbols above? Each of them shares the same skeleton. However, the dots, their placement and their numbers distinguish them from one another. On the right, the letter is baa; in the middle, the letter is taa; and on the left, the letter is thaa. Arabic can be resourceful in that it uses a limited amount of skeletons for different letters and makes minimal but perceptible changes to convey new meanings.

#NotAllTs

Where the English language uses one symbol for the letter “t,” Arabic uses multiple symbols to distinguish its varying sounds. Being mindful of your tongue, say the words “tab,” “thank,” “that” and “taught” aloud. If you pay close attention, you realize that the “t” sounds are different, particularly with the blends or combinations of two consonants. In Arabic, “tab” would be written with a ت,“thank” with a ث,“that” with a ذ and “taught” with a ط. The same is true with the letter “s”: “said” would begin with a س, “should” with a ش and “sought” with a ص.

Cursive is mandatory.

Lastly, for this week’s post, know that in Arabic, letters are generally connected in the written script. Just a handful of the 28 letters make up the exceptions, like ا (alif), ﯩ (daal), ذ (thaal), ر (raa), ز (zaay) and و (waaw). What makes the writing truly engaging is that the letters generally have an “independent/isolated” shape, an “initial” shape, a “medial” shape and a “final” shape. That is, depending upon where the letter appears in a word, it may take on a different appearance. Take nuun (ن), for example, the equivalent of “n” in the English alphabet. See the image below for its four different manifestations, all dependent upon position.

A screenshot from ArabicPod101.com as seen on youtube.com depicting the four representations of the letter nuun.

For more on this topic, visit Glocal Notes next week and remember to like our Facebook page!

*A mini glossary

abjad: A system much like an alphabet that relies strictly on the writing of consonants to relay messages. In other words, short vowels are largely excluded from the script in writing.

hamza and glottal stops: The word hamza describes a written symbol and a sound made with one’s throat. For example, upon saying “uh oh”, the “uh,” the sound produced is hamza. In linguistics, this vocal phenomenon is called a glottal stop. While most native speakers of English only make this sound to signify something haphazard, it is in fact an integral part of the Arabic language.

teeth and tails: Just like tittles – the dots topping the letters i and j – in learning to write Arabic, it is important to pay attention to the letters’ dots, serifs, curvatures, strokes and lengths. The “teeth” refer to the beginning and connecting segments of letters and the “tails” refer to their ending segments.

vowelled and unvowelled texts: In Arabic, words are typically written without short vowels. So, for example, the word “continent” would be written solely with its consonants, such as “cntnnt.” The language relies on the reader’s prior knowledge to supply the necessary vowels. For young and new learners and/or ambiguous messages, texts are generally “vowelled,” or, that is, they include the letters necessary to sound out the words’ pronunciations. These texts, however, are the exception, and not the rule. “Unvowelled texts” are far more common.

References

Brustad, Kristen. Alif Baa: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1995. Print.

Conlin, Jennifer. “For American Students, Life Lessons in the Middle East.” The New York Times. 6 August 2010. Web. 26 September 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/fashion/08Abroad.html.>

Csató, Éva Ágnes. The Turkic Languages. London: Routledge, 1998. Print.

Horton, Mark. The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society. Oxford: Blackwell publishers, 2000. Print.

“Transliteration.” Language Library: A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Hoboken: Wiley, 2008. Credo Reference. Web. 27 Sep 2015.

Watt, W. Montogomery. A History of Islamic Spain. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1965. Print.

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Project Genesis: The Reveal

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Katrina Spencer

A screenshot of the e-mail notification the author received, alerting her that her AncestryDNA results were ready.

On May 4^th, I got an e-mail that informed me that my DNA results had been processed and were available to review. I was nervous, almost as you might be in anticipating the results of an exam, and anxious, like when you’re sitting in reception, waiting to be called in for an interview. Would I ‘pass’? Was I ‘good enough? Would I find out information I in fact wanted to know? I logged into Ancestry DNA, and the image below depicts what I found.

A percentage breakdown and map of the author’s ethnicity estimates. Percentages of 5% and higher are included here. Benin/Togo: 30%; Nigeria: 23%; Cameroon/Congo: 14%; Senegal: 6%; Great Britain: 9%; Europe East: 5%

Eighty-one percent of my ancestry stems from West Africa, including people in regions that reside today in Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Ghana. Also, nineteen percent of my ancestry is European, the largest region represented being Great Britain. The image is a recipe, in a sense, for who I am. I have generous helpings of the French and English-speaking African Gulf and a pinch of the United Kingdom. This data represents my ethnic background and I felt myself walking taller and prouder as I began to process what this new information meant. Wanting more from my latest revelation, I began to seek out people I trusted who were also of African descent to help me to make sense of my findings. Did this data merely confirm what I suspected all along? Or was there more to it? My investigation led me not only to amplify how ideas of identity and ancestry are interpreted, but also to uncover some of my own biases. I interviewed a series of people who helped me to understand the diversity of perspectives related to heritage and some of their nuances within.

Bust of an African Woman by Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier, 1851. Photo Credit: Mary Harrsch

The first of these was Dr. Assata Zerai. She’s an associate dean in the Graduate College, a sociology professor and the new, incoming director of the Center for African Studies. Like me, she is African American, having been born and raised here in the United States, and shares not only the legacy of slavery, but also common phenotypic markers of Sub-Saharan African ancestry: brown skin, highly textured hair and full lips. When I asked her if she had ever considered requesting a DNA test like mine, her response was, “Not really.” As a self-identified Pan-Africanist, acknowledging a connection to the continent and its diaspora was more of a priority to her than knowing what specific regions represented her ancestry. Dr. Zerai’s research, professorship and mentoring, after all, regularly engage discourses regarding black populations. Some of her forthcoming publications, for example, address questions of healthcare in Nigeria, clean water in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and masculinity in Zimbabwe. For her, blackness is not necessarily something one verifies via chromosome counts and markers; it can manifest itself as a lifestyle through the people she cares for, the investigation she pursues and the scholarship she intentionally engages. For her, the likelihood of laboratory results meaningfully impacting the path she has already chosen is low.

A mosquito net draped over a bed. Photo Credit: Beatrice Murch

In the same effort of accessing my community to help me to interpret my results, I sought out Victor Jones, the Visiting Recruiting Specialist in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Victor is from the Southside of Chicago, and, aside from being a professional wrestler and a major R&B aficionado, he is also a Christian minister. The preservation of the black family is a continual concern for him and encouraging young people towards higher education is an integral part of his work. Interestingly, Victor says, “I don’t call myself African American. I prefer ‘black.’ I can’t readily trace my roots back to Africa.” Moreover, if any visit to Africa involves exposure to extremely high temperatures or sleeping under mosquito nets, he is simply not interested. “I don’t want to be outside of my comfort zone,” he said, claiming he would never live abroad. It was perhaps here that I began to realize that there were some myths in my mind that I had not yet confronted. Having spent the last 13 years on college campuses, I blindly believed that everyone wanted to go abroad and that the major obstacles were the price of plane tickets and short-lived vacation time. Learning that someone I knew opted to pass on opportunities to see the world stopped me and caused me to check my assumptions. While the African continent represents part of our shared historical past, the need to intimately know it is not necessarily pressing to all black peoples. For Victor, ministering to local populations and creating strong, reliable bonds with them takes precedence over international travel.

Sgt. Franklin Williams, home on leave from army duty, with Ellen Hardin. Baltimore, MD. 1942 Photo Credit: Black History Album

These two interactions reinforced the ideas that not only do African Americans—or blacks, depending upon one’s self-identification—eschew a monolithic set of preferences regarding what we call ourselves, but also the lack of information regarding our heritage does not necessarily make members of these groups feel less than whole. Some African American people are satisfied with their identities within a U.S. context. And, beyond that, a narrative that begins with slavery in North America is not necessarily a problematic one for those who ascribe to it. While understanding that there is an inextricable link to the “Motherland,” there is also a rich history and arguably separate identity here within the United States. Who am I to suggest otherwise? My reaching back into the annals (or lack thereof) of history in a search for self is just as valid as those who reach out and around them for the same purpose.

A depiction of “Sankofa,” a term from the Akan language that is used within many African American circles to symbolize the value of knowing one’s history. Photo Credit: Shannon Rose

My interviews, however, did not stop there. I wanted to get some feedback from some people who came from African countries. Surely their experiences were different and therefore their opinions, too. I next spoke with Dr. Maimouna Barro who is the Associate Director of the Center for African Studies. She teaches a course called Introduction to Modern Africa and, after making wudu (an Islamic cleansing ritual) and completing her afternoon prayers, she relayed to me her thoughts on seeking ancestry. While Senegal is the place she calls home, she clarified that “If you dig deeper, I’m not just from Senegal.” She then gave me a brief, multi-generational genealogy that included places of origin like Guinea-Conkary and Mauritania. These revelations highlighted another gap in my thinking. For example, if an ethnic group moves from home to a new site, much like with the displacement of Native American tribes along the Oregon Trail, are place markers a reliable source of ethnic identity? For example, I was born in Los Angeles, but that tells nothing of my father’s immigration from Costa Rica and my mother’s family’s migration from Louisiana or anything about our ethnic identities. So what does it mean, then, to submit one’s DNA to a laboratory and to pay for a map that matches one to places? Do we not really want a match to people? Not the imaginary boundaries we have assigned to land?

A map depicting the distribution and quantities of African people sold into slavery throughout the world. Photo Credit: Maddeler Halinde

Thomas Mukonde, a Zambian graduate assistant in the Undergraduate Library who works in both reference and instruction, was my last interviewee. He said that while tracing DNA seemed interesting, he would have to justify the cost. He knows, for example, that his parents represent the Mambwe/Lungu and Bemba ethnic groups and stated that he does not have a full need to explore his background as someone who is African American might. Moreover, based on his experiences as an undergraduate in Washington, D.C., he found that attempts to connect the African and African American student communities did not fully develop. “The only thing that unifies us is a history of oppression,” he said. “Africans in Africa were colonized. They were deliberately educated to become subjects or citizens. These education systems were very efficient. I don’t know how much Africa remains in the Africans who stayed on the continent.” Thomas suspected that within African American communities, despite and amidst centuries of deep repression, there was a preservation of African customs. Yet, history may have been overly effective in erasing some of these cultural manifestations on the African continent.

Work	Author or Editor	Available in our Library?
The Fire Next Time	Baldwin, James	Yes, as both an e-book and a print source.
Black Feminist Thought	Collins, Patricia Hill	A print copy is en route.
The Souls of Black Folk	DuBois, W.E.B.	Yes, as both an e-book and a print source.
Out of One, Many Africas: Reconstructing the Study and Meaning of Africa	Martin, William G. and Michael O. West	Yes, as both an e-book and a print source.
How to Be Black	Thurston, Baratunde	Yes, as a print source.
The Mis-Education of the Negro	Woodson, Carter Godwin	Yes, as both an e-book and a print source.
Slavery and Social Death	Patterson, Orlando	Yes, as both an e-book and a print source.

As with all of my intellectual inquiries, Project Genesis has brought me more questions and conversations than answers. What I found, however, was that at the same time that I was trying to dispel myths, I was working from a space of assertions I assumed to be true, and my investigation continually challenged them. How do I feel about my results? I was surprised that Benin and Togo factored in at all because in my mind, I had mistakenly ‘othered’ the regions as they are Francophone and not Anglophone; I was expecting a large swath of my ancestry to be West African, and I was right; I had an inkling that part of me was Nigerian, and that was correct; I was also a little disappointed to not have any Native American group show up in my results as my family lore suggested, as it does in many African American families, that we shared a lineage with some group(s) indigenous to the Americas. Some lingering queries address many issues: If they were to submit DNA samples, would their results be identical to mine? If I am 19% European, does that mean I’m white? Were I to ‘return’ to West Africa, what would await me there? This process taught me anew that the words ‘history’ and ‘identity’ more often than not should take on plural forms, and also that speaking to trusted people is key to finding one’s truth. For more sources for research on black ancestry, as recommended by the interviewees in this article and the author, see the table above. Below you will find an advertisement for a University of Illinois course led by David Wright that explores some of the same issues raised in this piece. Click here on Project Genesis: The Quest to see the first half of this series and be sure to like the International and Area Studies Library’s Facebook page for more articles like these.

An advertisement for the cross-listed ENGL 274/AFRO 298 course with study abroad component that explores slavery and identity led by David Wright at the University of Illinois.

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Introducing Dr. Kristina Riedel and the Swahili reference resources at the IAS Library

Posted on March 1, 2014 by sheriff2@illinois.edu

When University students enter classroom for the very first session of their semester-long Swahili course, many are quite surprised to see Dr. Kristina Riedel standing at the lectern or writing the day’s vocabulary list on the board. They tentatively take their seats, perplexed as the Berlin born linguist hands out syllabi and greets them with Habari Zenu ‘how are you’ in Tanzanian Standard Kiswahili. Students pursuing their first semester of Swahili coursework may be surprised to know that Riedel’s enthusiasm and earnest passion for East African cultures and languages spans the breadth of her young adulthood and much of her academic career.

Riedel took her first trip to Tanzania at the age of fourteen on a family vacation and was immediately smitten with Swahili society and culture. She endeavored to return and make the coast of Tanzania her new home. Years later she pursued her dream by getting enrolled in a four-year Swahili degree program. One of the requirements for the curriculum was a semester-long intensive study abroad program at the Institute of Kiswahili and Foreign Languages in Zanzibar town and another semester at the University of Dar es Salaam. Riedel excelled in Swahili and her quick grasp of the language earned her the respect of Tanzanian students enrolled at both institutions, with some of whom she maintains close friendships to this day.

Dr. Kristina Riedel

At the culmination of her undergraduate studies, she received her B.A. in African Language and Culture, with a concentration in Swahili. Riedel was awarded her M.A. in 2003 and Ph.D. in 2009 in Linguistics from the University of Leiden, having completed her graduate fieldwork and dissertation on the Syntax of object marking in Sambaa – a Bantu language spoken by the Wasambaa people situated in northwestern Tanzania.

Riedel has dedicated much of her academic and professional career to conducting fieldwork on Bantu languages spoken in different parts of Tanzania, namely Swahili – a Coastal lingua franca on the African continent’s east coast spoken in Kenya, mainland Tanzania, the Zanzibar archipelago, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and other Sub-Saharan African nations. She currently serves as the Director and Language Coordinator of Sub-Saharan African Languages, advisor for the Sub-Saharan African Languages Minor, and lecturer of Swahili with the University of Illinois’ Department of Linguistics. She is also one of the catalysts for the new Swahili reference section at the one subject library of our university library – International and Area Studies Library (IASL), located in the Main Library Room 321.

Beginning in fall 2013, Riedel established a relationship with IASL by collaborating with African Studies Bibliographer, Dr. Atoma Batoma, on a central space to access Swahili language reference materials including comprehensive dictionaries, grammar guides, and textbooks, and companion audio CD-ROMs used in the University’s Swahili curriculum. Riedel compiled a list of useful materials shelved in disparate sections within the University Library’s Main Stacks and helped organize their transfer to the International and Area Studies Library’s Africana Reference Collection. These materials are located on a newly designated shelf for Swahili language learners. Riedel hopes that showing the volume of resources available will not only encourage Swahili language learners to utilize the University’s library, but also get an idea of the scope of Swahili materials published and available to them. A current truncated list of Swahili reference books available at the IASL can be found here, but please note that this list is growing as Swahili reference books are transferred from the Main Stacks. These reference books do not circulate, but library patrons may read them in the IASL. They can also scan them at the IASL and send the scans to their email addresses, or save them to their USB flash drives.

Africana Reference Collection and Swahili materials at the International and Area Studies Library

Aside from the Swahili reference resources at the IASL, Riedel has used other avenues to promote the visibility of topics on East Africa such as offering a new course LING199: Language, culture and identity in East Africa and the Swahili-speaking world. This class covers Swahili language and linguistic diversity in East Africa. Riedel also worked with ATLAS information technology services to design a more robust Swahili Program website for University of Illinois faculty and students. The University’s Swahili Program website has been completely refurbished as she updated a number of the site’s features such as web links to online Swahili dictionaries, the Swahili Proverbs website created and funded by the Center for African Studies, and resources created at the University of Illinois’ library including: the Africana Film Database, Africana Collections and Services website and the African Studies Internet Portal.

Furthermore, the Swahili website now includes updated information on the 18 credit hour Sub-Saharan African Languages Minor for undergraduate students interested in gaining proficiency in Bamana, Lingala, Swahili, Wolof, or Zulu. This minor requires students to complete coursework in African Studies and Linguistics and compliments nearly any curriculum, especially for students who have an interest in working or studying abroad in Africa. Riedel also encourages Swahili language learners and those interested in East Africa to check out her public YouTube collection of documentaries, movies, news programs, etc.

University of Illinois students seeking to gain proficiency in Swahili can expect a structured, rigorous, and first-rate curriculum from the University of Illinois’ Swahili program and from Dr. Riedel, or as many of her students call her, “Mwalimu ‘teacher’ Kristina.” And beginning this Spring 2014 semester, the IASL now houses a number excellent reference resources on Swahili. We welcome users from various backgrounds to come into our library and use our resources. IASL also has librarians to help you with research questions on these topics.

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Staff Interview Series: Joe Lenkart

Posted on January 3, 2014 by sheriff2@illinois.edu

For another installment of our staff introductions, I interviewed Joe Lenkart, Interim Manager, Slavic Reference Service (SRS) and the Reference Specialist for Central Asia. Among other accolades, Joe was presented with the Outstanding Academic Professional’s Award from the University of Illinois’ Library in August.

Joe Lenkart has a Masters in Library and Information Science and a MA in Russian and East European Studies. Although he completed his undergraduate studies majoring in Chemistry, his academic and professional interests shifted towards history after attending a lecture on the Eurasian Steppe. Joe has also furthered his scholarly pursuits by volunteering in the Peace Corps. He was stationed in Smolensk region of western Russia.

Image from Russian satirical journal.

What are you most excited about working on here at the IAS Library? Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to share?
I am naturally excited about working in the same area that I went to high school. We are in a very unique place. Every summer we have people from all over the world coming here to use our collections. This is a tremendous honor for the State of Illinois and the University Library. It is also a morale booster and a treat because, as a manager of the reference service, I feel good about the audiences we serve.

In terms of future undertakings, we have a collection maintenance project that will involve reorganizing the Slavic microfiche collection, and we will unveil a portals database for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. This is a fully annotated, searchable database. Academic portals in Russia and Eastern Europe are much different because they are repositories for academic content and the community aspect for conducting research. These innovative resources have no equal in North America.

Please describe your typical work day at the library.
I arrive at approximately 7:45 am and I don’t leave until around 5:00 pm. In addition to working with the ILL department, we provide citation verification services, and answer international phone, chat, and email reference inquiries. For our funding agencies, we prepare specialized research guides. This workload continues despite additional projects.

What are your Slavic research and collection development interests?
I am really interested in the indigenous peoples of Siberia – ethnology of these ethnic groups, and specifically their religious identities. These resilient groups have been subjugated very harshly, and yet they have left behind a rich legacy.

What are some of your proudest accomplishments as a librarian, or any other field prior to your appointment as a librarian?
The recent academic professional award; but more importantly, the Slavic Reference Service gets regularly mentioned by national libraries. We are known as a reliable service and that is the proudest accomplishment.

What attracted you to the field of Library Science and your area of specialty?
For this field you must have an overdose of curiosity. It is a field for curious people and it was a perfect fit for me, having worked as a page at the Champaign Public Library and a clerk at the Douglas Branch. While working as a graduate assistant at the Undergraduate Library, I applied for another assistantship in the Slavic Library. After I was granted the assistantship, I was trained in general and specialized reference. The attraction to the profession was based on my admiration for my colleagues in the Undergraduate Library and the Slavic Reference Service [past and present]. My colleagues are hard-working and above all, they are selfless and extremely generous with their time.

Tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up? What languages do you speak? Etc.
I will use a Bob Dylan line to answer that question: “I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be, and so, I’m on my way home.” I can work with Russian, Turkish, Farsi, and took two years of Hebrew. I took Farsi at Indiana University, Central Eurasian Studies. I also took Spanish for five years during my undergraduate years.

Do you have any career advice for someone interested in librarianship, specializing in Slavic Languages and Literatures?
My best advice is to get your hands dirty. Get to know the physical setting of your workplace. I would recommend that before graduating with a degree in library and information science, you must have your toolkit ready to go for your area of service. You have to adapt with these sources and try to use them on a daily basis. Get back to basics. Theories come and go, but what remains is work. You have to like the daily work of libraries. You have to be willing to spend hours (days) on a reference question. If you cannot do this part, unfortunately, you will need to focus on research.

What is your favorite thing to do in the Champaign-Urbana area?
My favorite thing to do is spending time with my kids in Homer, Illinois.

What is your favorite place you’ve visited, local or anywhere in the world?
My favorite places I’ve visited are Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Most of my graduate career was spent studying these places. It was a real treat to see the places that I researched. For example, the famous Russian geographer Nikolai Mikhailovich Przheval’skii grew up in the village in the Smolensk region of Russia, where I was stationed during my volunteer work with the Peace Corps. I also went on an excursion to the town of Karakol (in Kyrgyzstan) where Przheval’skii died.

If you could have a signed copy of any novel or non-fiction what would it be and why?
If I could have something signed, it would be Great Expectations by Mr. Charles Dickens and The Red Badge of Courage by Mr. Stephen Crane. The characters in these novels made a strong impression on me.

What movie and/or book are you looking forward to this academic year (2013-2014)?
I am definitely looking forward to the Star Wars revamp. I’m a huge fan of science fiction films and, of course, the Walking Dead.

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Glocal Notes

from the International and Area Studies Library

Category Archives: Faculty and Staff

Adventures in Arabic, Part II

Adventures in Arabic, Part I

Project Genesis: The Reveal

Introducing Dr. Kristina Riedel and the Swahili reference resources at the IAS Library

Staff Interview Series: Joe Lenkart