Through a wide range of indigenous, postcolonial, gender and racial lenses, African writers have provided perspectives on various aspects of old age in the context of African literatures and cultures. This book illustrates how African literary and linguistic representations, ranging from short stories, novels and film to drama and theatre, give expression to ideas about old age. The perspectives offered here provide essential knowledge in understanding the uses of dichotomous age-related categories, such as old-young, elderly male-elderly female, and foreign-indigenous, which generally result in prejudice. Using ageism as its central theme, the contributions draw attention to the ambiguity associated with elderly people in African society who are often highly venerated for their wisdom, but also stereotyped because of their advanced age. However, as the book demonstrates, old age is also deeply valorised in some traditional African contexts, where older adults are regarded as indispensable members of society. It will be of particular interest to scholars, researchers, and students of African studies, applied theatre studies, gerontology, postcolonialism, sociolinguistics, sociology and anthropology.

The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an expansion of critical approaches to African literature. The Routledge Handbook of African Literature is a one-stop publication bringing together studies of African literary texts that embody an array of newer approaches applied to a wide range of works. This includes frameworks derived from food studies, utopian studies, network theory, eco-criticism, and examinations of the human/animal interface alongside more familiar discussions of postcolonial politics. Every chapter is an original research essay written by a broad spectrum of scholars with expertise in the subject, providing an application of the most recent insights into analysis of particular topics or application of particular critical frameworks to one or more African literary works. The handbook will be a valuable interdisciplinary resource for scholars and students of African literature, African culture, postcolonial literature and literary analysis. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book contains over 600 entries that cover criticism and theory, its development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers.

Taking a sociocultural and educational approach, Language and Linguistics in Context: Readings and Applications for Teachers: *introduces basic linguistic concepts and current perspectives on language acquisition; *considers the role of linguistic change (especially in English) in the politics of language; *acknowledges the role of linguists in current policies involving language; *offers insights into the relationship between the structure of language systems and first- and second-language acquisition; the study of language across culture, class, race, gender, and ethnicity; and between language study and literacy and education; and *provides readers with a basis for understanding current educational debates about bilingual education, non-standard dialects, English only movements, literacy methodologies, and generally the importance to teaching of the study of language. The text is organized into three thematic units – "What is Language and How is It Acquired?"; "How Does Language Change?"; and "What is Literacy?". To achieve both breadth and depth – that is, to provide a “big picture” view of basic linguistics and at the same time make it specific enough for the beginner – a selection of readings, including personal language narratives, is provided to both introduce and clarify linguistic concepts. The readings, by well-known theoretical and applied linguists and researchers from various disciplines, are diverse in level and range of topics and vary in level of linguistic formalism. Pedagogical features: This text is designed for a range of courses in English and language arts, bilingualism, applied linguistics, and ESL courses in teacher education programs. Each unit contains a substantive introduction to the topic, followed by the readings. Each reading concludes with Questions to Think About including one Extending Your Understanding question, and a short list of Terms to Define. Each unit ends with additional Extending Your Understanding and Making Connections activities that engage readers in applying what they have read to teaching and suggested projects and a bibliography of Print and Web Resources. The readings and apparatus are arranged so that the material can be modified to fit many course plans and schemes of presentation. To help individual instructors make the most effective use of the text in specific classes, a set of matrixes is provided suggesting configurations of readings for different types of linguistics and education classes.

African phenomenology is an emerging subfield within the broader domain of African and Africana philosophy. The phenomenological method, with its various approaches to studying the seminal structures and meaning of human experience, has been a cornerstone in the thought of African philosophers such as Paulin Hountondji, Tsenay Serequeberhan, Achille Mbembe, D. A. Masolo, and Mabogo More, as well as proponents of Africana philosophy such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Lucius Outlaw, and Lewis Gordon. Technically, however, the term "African phenomenology" is not used as widely, or introduced as systematically, as Africana phenomenology. This anthology aims to fill this gap by exploring contributions and challenges to phenomenology in its African context and demonstrating the differences this context makes to the practice of phenomenology. Written by some of the most eminent scholars in the field—including Hountondji, Serequeberhan, Mbembe, More, Gordon, and M. John Lamola—the sixteen original essays here address the relation of African phenomenology to African/Africana philosophy, postcolonial/decolonial discourse, and deliberations within the international phenomenological community.

This handbook offers the most comprehensive, analytic, and multidisciplinary study of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the African Diaspora to date. Preeminent scholars Akintunde Akinyemi and Toyin Falola assemble a team of leading and rising stars across African Studies research to retrieve and renew the scholarship of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the Diaspora just as critical concerns about their survival are pushed to the forefront of the field. With five sections on the central themes within orality and folklore – including engagement ranging from popular culture to technology, methods to pedagogy – this handbook is an indispensable resource to scholars, students, and practitioners of oral traditions and folklore preservation alike. This definitive reference is the first to provide detailed, systematic discussion, and up-to-date analysis of African oral traditions and folklore.

From early medieval times to the present, this diverse collection of thirty-one essays sets literary texts in their historical contexts.

This handbook provides a critical overview of literature dealing with groups of people or regions that suffer marginalization within Africa. The contributors examine a multiplicity of minority discourses expressed in African literature, including those who are culturally, socially, politically, religiously, economically, and sexually marginalized in literary and artistic creations. Chapters and sections of the book are structured to identify major areas of minority articulation of their condition and strategies deployed against the repression, persecution, oppression, suppression, domination, and tyranny of the majority or dominant group. Bringing together diverse perspectives to give a holistic representation of the African reality, this handbook is an important read for scholars and students of comparative and postcolonial literature and African studies.