Five Colleges, Incorporated: Grant Enriches the Study of Africa

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Grant Enriches the Study of Africa across the Curriculum

Five Colleges, Incorporated has received a three-year grant totaling $337,000 from the U.S. Department of Education’s Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program (UISFL). Funds from the grant will be used to enrich the study of Africa at the five campuses by expanding offerings in African languages and in African Studies across the curriculum, supporting faculty workshops on African languages, and assisting students returning from study abroad. This award funds a new collaboration among the Five College African Studies Council, the Five College Center for the Study of World Languages, and the music departments. Their project calls for piloting new formats for language instruction, seeding new courses and course components that treat African issues in non-African areas of the curriculum, and adding a position in African ethnomusicology.

The collaboration grows out of a self-study carried out by the African Studies Council in 2003 to assess the scope of African Studies here and recommend ways to expand and enrich it further. Activities supported by the grant include:

A position in Swahili to offer instruction on each of the campuses, combining individual tutorials, group conversation classes, and Web-based learning;
Four new African languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Hausa, and Yoruba) to be offered, in addition to Twi and Wolof, through the center’s Supervised Independent Language Program (SILP);
A new collaboratively taught capstone colloquium in African studies geared to students returning from study abroad;
Stipends to support non-Africanist scholars revising or developing new courses in three thematic areas: health and society; globalization and development; and performing cultures. Stipend recipients will meet in seminar with Five College Africanists and scholars visiting from Africa as part of the council’s African Scholars Program;
A Five College joint appointment in the ethnomusicology of Africa.

The co-directors of the project are both members of the Five College African Studies Council: Mitzie Goheen, professor of anthropology, Amherst College, and Elliot Fratkin, professor of anthropology, Smith College. The director of the Five College Center for the Study of World Languages is Elizabeth Mazzocco, professor of Italian, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Posted 5/18/05

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