Cultural Connections: From Senegal and West Africa To Your Classroom

A teaching resource about Senegal and West Africa, for educators providing meaningful thematic lesson plans, web quests, and manipulatives connected to State of Michigan Standards and Benchmarks. The themes of globalization, migration, language policy, literacy, and popular culture are incorporated in lessons ranging from family and community life for the elementary classroom to structural adjustment at the university level.

http://www.cultureconnections.org/index.html

Beyond the Stream

This is the full-text, electronic version of the book originally published in 1992. In this study of the changing religious practices of a Dyula Muslim community in Cote d’Ivoire, the author examines the ways in which this religious and ethnic minority group living on the fringes of the Muslim world maintains its ties to the universal Islamic tradition while adapting everyday religious practices to the local context. Through the lens of this specific community, Launay elucidates the interaction between fundamental Islamic beliefs, anchored historically in the Arab Middle East, and the continually changing ways that Islam is lived, wherever it is professed. The book is made available on the Web as part of the University of California Press’s eScholarship Editions project.

http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft3199n7w5&brand=ucpress

West African Art

Name: Tara Kelly

School: Thomas W. Pyle Middle School

Lesson Plan

West Africa

Name: Amy Smith

Discipline: History

School: Wilde Lake High School

Grade Level: High School

Lesson Plan

Sacred Space: Religion and Society in the Islamic World, How was Islam absorbed and adapted in 14th – 16th century West African kingdoms?

Name: Cynthia Ann Magruder and Paula Russo

Discipline: History and Visual Arts, respectively

School: Mercy High School, Baltimore, MD

Grade Level/Content Focus: Ninth Grade/World Cultures, Social Studies

Time Required for Lesson: One 75-minute class period

Lesson Plan

Africa and Islam

Islam has been a highly influential factor on the African continent for over a millennium, adding much to the fabric of indigenous African cultures through various dimensions of its religious faith and visual language. As in other parts of the world, Islamic conversion was effected through trade and migration far more often than by force. In Africa, Islam has taken many unique forms as the product of many different conversion experiences.

Islam and Indigenous African Culture

Islamic Africa Today (Map)

The Advent of Islam in West Africa

The Mosque and West African Islam

Rise of Islam in Northern Ghana

The Advent of Islam in East Africa

The Mosque and East African Islam