The Gulf Coast Conference On The Teaching Of Writing: Fill & Download for Free

EDIT 1Scored 198 in interview.————————————————————Do you know the common thing between a dinosaur and a predictable interview? Well, both don't exist.Interview is one such process that if you study 10 things, UPSC will end up asking the 11th thing.Having given two CSE interviews in the past, I can definitely tell that each interview is going to be a surprise. Each time they will ask something totally different, something which you never imagined.My CSE 2019 interview was all about history, because history was my optional and also my post graduation subject. And being history, one can go to any depthTHE CORONA SPOILERHow can things ever happen on time? My original interview date was 31st March. But this tiny virus screwed it all. A total lockdown was declared on 24th March. There go all my efforts and mocks down the drain!The revised schedule was declared and my new interview was on 22nd July. But not without problems. Now the travel to Delhi was fraught with risk. Delhi was having its own romance with Coronavirus with 1000+ cases daily. Getting documents photocopied, getting passport size photos clicked, every damn thing problematic.In that, the actual interview was comic. All panel members wore masks and face shields. I had to wear them too. Imagine they could only see my eyes. All my efforts to sport a manly moustache went down the drain :DIn that got added another trouble of fogging. After every 5 minutes in the interview, I had to put my hand inside the face shield and clean the fog just to see who exactly is asking the question.THE ACTUAL INTERVIEWMy panel was of TCA Anant sir. I was the last to goBasic information- Graduation in Mech Engg, MA History and Optional- HistoryCHAIRMANWelcome Ashutosh. Have a seat. (This was the first and last time the chairman smiled)So you hail from Pune?Yes sir.You have worked in MyGov which is under Govt of India. Where was your work place?Sir it was in Delhi, in the Ministry of ElectronicsWhat responsibility you had there?(time to blurt the mugged up answer) Sir, I was the solutions architect. I had three responsibilities. First, I tracked the government policies and announcements and gave it to the graphics team to create infographics and videos. Second, I was responsible for editing a Performance Dashboard that had daily statistics of the progress of 32 government schemes. Third, I was into preparing a AI-based eligibility engine wherein a person inputs his details and the engine tells which schemes he is eligible for.You have cleared UGC NET. What made you take history as a subjectSir, history is my passion. I felt that after studying a technical subject like Mechanical Engineering, I should learn some social science like history. (To paraphrase, I am a bad mechanical engineer)Why teaching?Sir, I feel my communication skills are good. I see teaching as a Plan B, although civil services is my first priority. (Chairman's face was worth watching)M1-There are games like Blue Whale challenge which are detrimental to children. How to control them?(Seriously, this question?) Sir, we can ban such games, create awareness among parents and also have advisories in Play Store apps.You write a blog on ancient history. Tell us moreI write mainly on economic aspects of ancient history like trade, commerce, crafts, urbanization, banking and usury, numismatics, etc (He didn't hear numismatics properly thanks to the mask.)Can you tell us about the Chicago speech of Swami Vivekananda? (DAF)Sir, there was a conference on world religions being held in Chicago in 1893. The chief aim was to prove the world that Christianity is superior. Swami Vivekananda was representing the Indic thoughts. His speech started with “My brothers and sisters of America” made people clap…..But what was his exact message there?The message was based on Vedanta. It talks of unity of Jeevatma and Parmatma. It means each one is divine manifestation of almighty. It talked of equality and justice. (sounded like a typical philosophical essay)Let's move to other religions. Bible says Faith Can Move Mountains. What do you make of it?Sir it means even if the problem seems insurmountable, having faith in oneself can get you success. Best case is of our soldiers protecting our nation in the Himalayas. The enemy is strong, yet their faith made them beat the incursion. (basically, I was telling the panel please ask on China but alas to no avail)What was Spinoza's conception of God?(Who on earth is Spinoza? Sounds like spinach pizza) Sorry sir, I don't know.M2What subjects you learnt in MA History?Sir we learnt about political structures, economic history, social structures and also a bit of world history. (I repent saying world history. I remembered the Batman dialogue- A storm is coming, Mr Wayne)Let's talk about Roman Empire. Which is your favourite king?Sir, I like Nero. (Damn! I hardly know anything about world history. I simply forgot about Julius Caesar or Tiberius)But why Nero?I think out of all the glorious kings of Roman Empire, Nero was the only maniac and yet he managed to rule. He was enjoying his time when Rome was burning. (I am still laughing on this stupid answer)The look on the member's face was like-Compare Julius Caesar and Augustus CaesarSir, Julius Caesar was more idealistic than Augustus. Julius laid the base of Roman Empire while Augustus expanded it right up to Persian Gulf. From India's perspective, we had better relations with Augustus since we know his embassy existed in Cragnanore in KeralaDo you know about the history of Carthage from where Roman Empire sprung?(What the hell is that?) Sorry sir, I will read about it more.You have learnt German in school. Why did you choose it?Two reasons. First, I wanted to learn a foreign language because it adds up to my skills. Secondly, many German companies exist in India. They require German proficiency for their workers.Why did First World War start?There were 3–4 main reasons. First was the rush for colonies that started in late 19th century. Second, an arms race started between big nations often leading to secret alliances like Triple Alliance, Triple Entente, etc. Thirdly, the Balkans was a burning issue especially after the Berlin Settlement of 1878, the Balkan Wars of 1908 and 1911. Lastly, the immediate trigger was the killing of Franz Josef, the Austrian prince in Sarajevo. Austria accused Serbia of plotting the killing.Why did Second World War last so long?Sir mainly because it was a fight between technologically powerful nations. One side invented new weapons, the other side reciprocated. This led to built up.Any role of USSR in defeating Hitler?Yes sir. (How did I forget this). The longest period in the war was between Germany and Russia. Operation Barbarossa was a big blunder of Hitler. He underestimated power of USSR and couldn't survive the cold.Name the decisive Allied battle fought on French soil and the Allied commanderThe decisive battle is the landing of Allied forces on French coast of Normandy. The Allied commander was General EisenhowerM3-Is access to safe drinking water a fundamental right?Yes sir. By the interpretation of Article 21 i.e Right to Life can mean that.Is it explicitly mentioned in Constitution?No sirDo you know any SC cases about that?Sorry sir, I dont recall.Do you know something about 13 digit mobile number ?Sorry sir. (Who on earth creates a 13 digit number?)Why are voting percentage low in middle class during elections? (DAF)Sir, there are two three reasons. The middle class often believes the governments are either for the poor or the rich. Secondly, given their economic stability, middle class doesn't think it necessary to vote because they remain unaffected by it. Thirdly, a casual attitude arises because of deep distrust of politicians. They think nobody is good, hence no point in voting.M4Can you tell us in detail about earliest trade that took place in Indian history?The earliest known proof is the Harappan trade with Mesopotamia. There are cities like Ur and Nippur on the banks of Tigris and Euphrates where Harappan seals and artifects have been found.Was balance of trade in favour of Harappans while trading with Mesopotamia?I think it was in favour of Harappans. The Mesopotamian records of kings shows that they were crazy for Lapis Lazuli, a blue stone found in Meluha or India. On the other hand, no Mesopotamian artifact has been found in India.What are the Harappan seals used for?There were mainly used for identification purposes. They were also used as stamps. (I explained how seals were mirror images and how the real image comes out when we stamp the seal on paper). Some people may also have worn them as necklaces for religious purposesThere was a study about racial setup of Indians. What is your view about it?Sir there was a recent study by Vasant Shinde et al, on the DNA samples of Rakhigarhi. I think Indians are of mixed racial setup. The study showed certain haplogroups like R1A were absent in India in Harappan times. It proved that there was a steady influx of Steppe population in India from 2000 BCE onwards. Whether it proves or disproves the Aryan invasion is yet to be seen.Can Harappan script be ever deciphered?No sir. Its too politicised. Everyone have their own interpretations. The claims of origin are far ranging from Proto-Brahmi to Dravidian to Austro-Asiatic.What are technical issues in deciphering a script?The biggest issue is that the Indus script is pictographic. It has more than 100 symbols each representing something. Secondly, the script is Boustrophedon, meaning its written right-left-left-right.Tell me about trade that happened after the decline of Harappan civilizationThe trade started after 6th century BCE as India again saw a wave of urbanization in later Vedic Age. The land trade was with Persians as seen from their records. By 4th century BCE, the trade with Greece began. The Arthashastra also mentions trade with Suvarnabhumi or today's Java and Sumatra.How was trade scenario in ancient south India?It was better than North due to discovery of sea routes. Satvahanas, Cheras, early Cholas and Pandyas traded from ports like Muziris, Korkai, Kaveripatnam, Arikamedu, etc. Sangam literature like Manimekalai mentions voyages to SE Asia. Excavation revealed Roman artifacts like statues of kinds, coins like Aurei and Dinarii. It shows trade with RomeWas India in surplus with respect to Roman trade?Yes sir. There is a Roman writer Pliny The Elder. In his Natural History, he claims Rome was being drained of its gold and silver because they bought spices from India.How reliable is Pliny's statement?Sir its quite reliable because Indian excavation reveal good amount of crafts. Spices, gems, leather, cotton, steel Damascene swords were in demand world over. Indian texts even called pepper as Yavana-Priya or the spice loved by foreignersHow ancient India traded with SE Asia?It was a two way trade. India exported cotton, silk, leather and iron while we got exquisite spices and camphor. In fact, India also exported its entire civilization to these regions. They accepted our faith, gods and practices.Was that trade surplus?Yes it was. India was far bigger economy than any kingdom in SE Asia.Then why is modern India now in trade deficit with ASEAN?(Finally some current affairs).Sir, India adopted a socialistic approach of economy while ASEAN adopted liberal policies. Secondly, they focused on trade and services due to their peculiar geography while we couldn't grow in any sector.Can the trade deficit ever be filled?I don't see that in near term because India didn't sign the RCEP.The interview felt good because most questions were on history. The panel gave no indication at all. I thanked all and came out.Will update once the marks are declared. For now, this is what I did after the interview

Gotta go anonymous here….I’m not an engineer, but I think you guys will appreciate the “dealing with non-technical people” side of this story.For over 10 years I worked for a privately owned midsize company. My final project for them was to take them online — in 2014!The reason they had no online presence til then is that the owner is an older fellow who just wasn’t sure that people were really making money on this Internet thing. (Until, I think, about 2011 he had not even used email. He’d have his assistant type up his emails and put them on his desk every morning. Then he’d dictate his replies to her and she would type them up and send them.)Now this guy, let’s call him Fred, is your classic seagull manager.He and his wife spend most of their time at their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th homes on the gulf coast, the sea islands, and the Caribbean, or out traveling. From time to time, though, Fred spends a few days at the office, asking questions and telling people to do different things or to do things differently.Now this guy hasn’t had his fingers in the operations since the ’70s and has n0 clue how the enterprise actually operates. That’s because he’s a “bottom line guy” who doesn’t have time to review anything but results.So the managers developed a habit of saying yes to everything he told them to do, then forgetting about it and doing things their way.The problem was, this only convinced Fred that his instructions were making the company succeed, and that nobody could do anything right without his guidance. After all, he continually had to tell the managers to stop what they were doing and do it his way, and the results were consistently successful! Fred’s touch was pure gold!This man was the bane of my existence.Here are some highlights:Thought we should have “an app”. Hired a consultant to phone conference with the team, who opened by explaining that “app” was short for “application”. Fred insists that the team write all this down.Now that he was on the Internet, Fred would keep his eye out for marketing strategies that he thought might be good for the new online venture. When he found one, he would email us a link to the page and tell us to look at a particular ad on that page and follow it. We never found a way to make him understand why this didn’t work.Insisted that we drive initial traffic (to an as-yet undesigned site) with Facebook ads. Because he knew a guy who could do that. (That lasted until things progressed to the point that I was able to produce a spreadsheet showing the conversion rate we’d need to make his scheme profitable, which was off the charts.)Spent thousands of dollars hiring that guy as a consultant. To teach us how to place Facebook ads. Which, btw, this guy was using to drive traffic to a brick and mortar store, not to drive online sales. And this store was in another country. On another continent.After talking with an insurance salesman at a conference who used a distributed personnel network, decided we should look into transforming our operation so that everyone works from home. Maybe I could roll that into the project?Fred loved those banner ads for things like herbal supplements or survivalist training courses that lead to half-hour long video pitches. He was certain that this was the way to establish a killer online presence for the company. Wanted it to be a central piece of the project.Couldn’t comprehend why we would want to use an opt-in strategy in our funnel. Because hey, that’s gonna cut down your list like crazy!Viewed the development and onboarding team I’d selected, as well as the platform provider I’d chosen (one of the top providers in the US) with open suspicion, saying “sometimes a lot of these folks don’t really know what they’re doing.”Somehow, I managed to deliver in 7 months. Original project timeline was 6 months.On my final day, Fred was in the office, and he knew it was my final day. He didn’t come up to say good-bye, didn’t invite me to lunch, nothing. The following day I got a call from a 2nd tier, saying that Fred and his wife were flying out at 2:30 so he wanted me to hurry on out to his favorite lunch place and meet with him before they had to leave.I was in the middle of packing up my house to move to another city.I told her that if Fred wanted to talk to me, my rate is $150 for the first hour or any portion thereof, and if he called me and I so much as picked up the phone and said “Hello” he’d be getting a bill.PS: Totally different story, but my favorite from my time there….One day I needed to use an outlet for something, and was searching for something I could unplug temporarily. The outlet just across from my workstation had 2 extension cords plugged in, one running to the zone printer, and another into a utility closet.That seemed odd, so I traced the extension cord into the closet, under the door jamb, behind the air handler, and finally into a hole in the floor.Couldn’t stop there, obviously! So I went outside and used the exterior windows to deduce the relative location of the hole from the first floor. Went back inside and found a manager’s office in that spot.This office had been carved out of a larger room. The main room was lit by panels of fluorescent lights that sat flush with the acoustic drop ceiling. But the office had been put in an area without a drop ceiling, and therefore no inset lighting. Instead, it had a drop-down unit attached to the solid ceiling of the office.Sure enough, the cord from this external fluorescent fixture disappeared into the ceiling, directly below where the extension cord disappeared into the floor of the utility closet above.YCMTSUImage by Work Redefined: Seagull Management

Robert Smith's answer to Why is African literature difficult to define?Literature is after all defined as “written works of a significant or lasting nature”and Africa has not had the privilege of a long history of writers and has historically relied more on oral literature, which in fact is very rich in its own context. So, time and educational emphasis may be the short answer.…Awards - African Writers ConferenceLibGuides: Africa: Revealed Through Literature: Novels & Short StoriesTop 50 African Literature Blogs & Websites in 2020African literature is a countryThe African Writers - Promoting African WritersLiterature has liberated Africa’s authors……..Africa's 100 best books of the 20th Century……..Precolonial Africa had written traditions…..https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/213813144.pdfEileen Julien African LiteratureBut it is not possible to speak or write of African literature as homogeneous or coherent, any more than this claim can be made for the varied texts that constitute European literature. Africa is a vast continent, consisting of more than fifty nations and several hundred languages and ethnic groups. And despite many cultural similarities across the continent and a virtually ubiquitous history of imperialism and neocolonialism, there are many African experiences and many verbal expressions of them. Moreover, to see what we are calling African literature in proper perspective is to recognize from the outset both that it is a gendered body of work and that it represents but a fraction of the verbal arts in Africa. There is a vast production of African-language literature and oral traditions, which is largely unknown and ignored by those outside the continent.Indeed, verbal artistic traditions, literary as well as oral, are ancient in Africa. Centuries before European colonialism and the introduction of European languages, there were bards and storytellers, scribes, poets, and writers in languages such as Kiswahili and Amharic. Many of those traditions adapt and live on in various guises today, and the African writers who will be considered in this chapter draw on these indigenous oral and written traditions as well as those of Europe, the Americas, and Asia.Understanding of African literature has changed tremendously in the last twenty years, because of several important developments: the ever-increasing numbers of women writers, greater awareness of written and oral production in national languages (such as Yoruba, Poular, and Zulu), and greater critical attention to factors such as the politics of publishing and African literature's multiple audiences.These developments coincide with and have, in fact, helped produce a general shift inliterary sensibility away from literature as pure text, the dominant paradigm for many years, to literature as an act between parties located within historical, socioeconomic and other contexts. Fiction, plays, and poetry by women from around the continent have been singularly important because they "complicate" the meaning of works by their literary forefathers, bringing those works into sharper relief, forcing us to see their limits as well as their merits. There are many ways to divide the terrain of literature written by Africans.These approaches reflect the fact that the continent is home to many different peoples and cultural practices, political and physical geographies, local and nonlocallanguages. Thus we routinely divide African literature by region (West Africa, East Africa, North Africa, Central Africa, southern Africa, each of which is more or less distinctive vironmentally and historically), by ethnicity (the Mande, for example, live across the region now divided by the states of Guinea, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, and Mali), or by nationality (a heritage of nineteenth-century European literary practice, whose merit in the African context is sometimes debated, and which privileges the force of national history and identity as opposed to ethnic or "African" determinants). African literature is also often categorized by language ofexpression (anglophone, francophone, Hausa, Swahili, etc.) or genre (poetry, proverb, narrative, drama, essay), or some combination of these. The field may also be examined in terms of themes or generations. These many approaches suggest not only the diversity and complexity of life on the African continent but also the stuff of which literature is made: language, aesthetic and literary traditions, culture and history, sociopolitical realityWendy Laura BelcherEarly African Literature: An Anthology of Written Texts from 3000 BCE to 1900 CEIntroductionContrary to the general perception, the African literatures written before the twentieth century are substantial. Whatever limits can be imagined—in terms of geography, genre, language, audience, era—these literatures exceed them. Before the twentieth century, Africans wrote not just in Europe, but also on the African continent; they wrote not just in European languages, but in African languages; they wrote not just for European consumption, but for their own consumption; they wrote not just in northern Africa, but in sub-Saharan Africa; they wrote not just orally, but textually; they wrote not just historical or religious texts, but poetry and epic and autobiography; and they wrote not just in the nineteenth century, but in the eighteenth century and long, long before.Yet, the general public and even scholars of African literature are often unaware of these early literatures, believing that African literature starts in the late 1950s as the result of colonization. In this view, Africa is a savage Caliban who is introduced to writing by a European Prospero and Things Fall Apart is his first articulation. Westerns assume that whatever writing happened to be done on the continent was not done by Africans or in African languages and scripts until very recently. This lack of awareness of three thousand years of African writing is particularly surprising given the legions of pre-twentieth-century African texts that historians have uncovered and studied in the past fifty years. While historians labor to overturn long-held misconceptions about Africa as a place without history, literary critics have done little to overturn misconceptions of Africa as a place without literature. The extraordinarily rich trove of pre-twentieth century African continental literatures has yet to be written about in any depth by Euro-American literary critics. Certainly, no book addresses their work at length and almost no literary essays published outside of Africa address the continental works.African literature written over the last millennia remains largely invisible for several significant reasons. One, many of the texts written more than two hundred years ago have not survived, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Scholars know they existed because travelers reported on them and extant texts make reference to now lost texts. Two, many were never published as print books and of those few manuscripts that were, most were published in obscure places. Three, very few of the texts written in an African language have been translated into any European language. For instance, the hundreds of Ethiopian indigenous texts remain obscure because only a handful have been translated into English. Indeed, in the dramatic cases of texts written in Meroitic or Libyco-Berber, the texts cannot be translated as the language and script is no longer understood. One of the great challenges of the twenty-first century will be archiving and translating the vast libraries of East and West Africa. Fourth, many continue to see sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa as geographic and literary domains separated by a gulf, rather than, as historians and archeologists continue to prove, having deep links to each other. As the origin of the human species, Africa is home to the most diverse peoples of any continent, one of its great strengths. That some of these Africans are lighter-skinned than others is an irrelevancy. All those born on the African continent, and whose forbearers were born on the continent, are Africans and have contributed to its vibrancy. The obsession with the race or region of African authors has resulting in obscuring the literature of the continent and prevented productive comparative work.This lack of knowledge about early African literature torques the study of modern African literature. Analyses of contemporary writing in the United States, Britain, or Europe often take into account a centuries-old literary tradition rooted in different but related forms and themes. But research on African literature today tends to ignore the continent’s long literary history, with most scholars today focusing on African writing in European languages produced since 1950. For example, few situate later Nigerian experiments in English like Tutola’s Palm-Wine Drinkard, Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy, and Iweala’s Beast of No Nation in relation to the English of earlier West African texts, such as the eighteenth-century diary of Antera Duke, an Efik slave-trading chief in what is now Nigeria. Likewise, few lay Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart alongside the work of Nigerian authors of the nineteenth century who were also concerned about the interaction of Christianity and local beliefs—including Egba clergyman Joseph Wright (1839), the famous Yoruba Anglican bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1837), and the Hausa writer Madugu Mohamman Mai Gashin Baki . Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor’s work on the Queen of Sheba is not considered in the context of the thirteenth-century Ethiopian text about her, Kebra Nagast.Selection of TextsWhatever the reasons that these literatures do not get the attention they deserve, the time is well past to start giving them that attention. This book therefore seeks to introduce these literatures and provide excerpts from a few. Influenced by recent trends in literary theory, particularly new historicism, I have selected texts using broad definitions of the basic categories. By “written text,” I mean anything inscribed by human hand or machine on any surface—whether parchment, paper, or stone—that uses a system of signs (symbolic or orthographic) that can be read by many members of a particular cultural group. By “Africa,” I mean the entire African continent and the peoples who originated there. By “African author,” I mean anyone born on the African continent to someone born on the African continent. I do not exclude authors on the basis of race, although I do note the author’s national or ethnic background. In the case of North Africa, I have been more exclusionary, focusing on African texts by those whose families were not originally from Europe or the Middle East. Thus, I have not included North African Roman or Greek authors. Since African diasporic literature written in the Americas has been collected and published frequently elsewhere, I do not include African diasporic authors unless they were born on the African continent. By “literature,” I mean any original text with elevated language or an active “I”, but specifically poetry, epic, romance, hymns, fictional narrative, epistles and belles letters, personal manifestos or philosophy, diaries, biography, and autobiography. Although many African translations vary significantly from their Arabic or Greek originals, I have not included any translations of texts written outside of Africa. By “written African literature,” I mean a text composed and written down in any language by an African author (or, in some rare cases, his or her amanuensis). I do not exclude texts written in European languages. I do exclude oral texts—although Africa has always had a vast unwritten literature in the oral forms of drama, epic, and poetry, that is not the subject of this book. A desideratum remains studying oral and written African literature together; I hope this book will aid that process.Our exclusion of certain authors or texts is never an argument about their importance or salience, but only due to such authors and texts finding adequate representation elsewhere. Thus, I do not generally include texts written by Europeans in Africa, although many Europeans who lived on the African continent for long periods had imbibed local thought and can be seen as part of a larger African literature. Such authors are generally represented well in travel anthologies.Quite frequently, texts are omitted because no English translation is available, no translation is possible, or all copies of the text have been lost. It is quite clear that for every extant pre-twentieth century African text, a thousand others did exist but were destroyed by the elements or conquest.Categories of TextsIn practice, this means that four general categories of written African literature are represented in this text. A prominent category of early written African literature is that written by Africans outside of Africa, in particular those who spent the majority of their lives in Europe or the Americas and were trained in Western educational systems. This includes not only the literature written by the millions of Africans taken to the new world as slaves, but also that written by the hundreds of African youths whom Europeans sent from the continent every year to study in England, France, Portugal, Italy, Holland and Germany from the 1400s on. While the genre of the slave narrative has been widely explored by literary scholars, this later type of the writing done by free Africans in Europe has received less attention, perhaps because much of it was not written in English. For instance, a rich but almost entirely unexplored body of early written African literature is African scholarship in Latin for European universities. I suspect that many discoveries of African literature will be made as more material from European universities is digitalized and the African authorship of some of these theses becomes known. Likewise for early written African literature in Portuguese.Another category of early written African literature is texts written by Africans on the African continent in Arabic. These include medieval inscriptions in Arabic from eleventh-century gravestones in Mali; letters written by the Emperor of Morocco in the 1600s to various European heads of state; Tarikh el-Fettach, a fifteenth-century manuscript about Jews in Tendirma, near Timbuktu; Tarikh es-Soudan, a seventeenth-century manuscript written by Abd-al-Rahman al Sadi of Timbuktu about the lives and wars of the kings of Mali in the 1200s, Kitab Ghanja, a chronicle from the 1700s in modern Ghana, and so on. Various archival projects in West and East Africa are bringing to light even more African manuscripts dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately, a tendency to see Arabic as a language foreign to the African continent, despite being in use there for over a thousand years, leads to dismissing Arabic African literature as not indigenous. This would be tantamount to dismissing British literature as Italian because of the Roman invasion 2000 years ago. Misconceptions of Africa as a savage, untouched paradise do not square with the reality of Africa’s millennia of trading relationships with non-Africans and its long traditions of Islam and Christianity.The final category of early written African literature is that written by Africans on the African continent in African languages, sometimes in African scripts. The African languages with the largest bodies of extant texts are Gəˁəz, Kiswahili, Hausa, Amharic, and Somali [more].We do not want to suggest that these categories cannot be fruitfully read together. For instance, if I look at some of the early writing by just one ethnic group in West Africa over just one century I find it occurring in several languages and over several continents. There were at least half-a-dozen eighteenth-century Akan writers (Gonja Chronicles?) whose manuscripts have survived. These texts by these Akan authors must be seen as the result of a particular African discursive system, not just as tainted by the European languages in which they were sometimes written. All these men were shaped by the same African culture and their texts should be read in light of each other.African ScriptsAs the table shows, ancient Africa had many indigenous scripts, including hieroglyphs and hieratic, both developed in Egypt around five thousand years ago to represent the ancient Egyptian language. Egyptians then invented Demotic, which was related to Hieratic, and Coptic, which was related to Greek and used to represent an African language. Nubians used all the Egyptian scripts, but also invented their own, Meroitic, to represent the African languages of Meroitic and Old Nubian. Meanwhile in North Africa and the Sahel, Africans invented the Libyco-Berber scripts to represent a variety of Berber languages, while East Africans invented Ethiopic (or Gəˁəz) to represent the African language of Gəˁəz. In the medieval period, Africans in East, West, and North Africa used the Arabic script, but in the early modern period, Africans invented Ajami, which is related to the Arabic script, for their East and West African languages. It is only in the twentieth century that the Roman alphabet came to be used widely in Africa. By the late eighteenth century, Africans also invented the secret ideographic writing system of Nsibidi. That Nsibidi was “discovered” by Europeans only in the twentieth century suggests that other unknown African scripts may have been used during the early modern period. It is also worthwhile to mention Adinkra, a pictographic script invented by 1817 in what is now Ghana, and Vai, an alphabet invented in Liberia in the 1830s. In the twentieth century, Africans invented over a dozen scripts, but only a few are still used.…Ancient Egyptian literature - WikipediaAncient Egyptian literature was written in the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature.Writing in ancient Egypt—both hieroglyphic and hieratic—first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the late phase of predynastic Egypt. By the Old Kingdom (26th century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works included funerary texts, epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to 17th century BC) that a narrative Egyptian literature was created. This was a "media revolution" which, according to Richard B. Parkinson, was the result of the rise of an intellectual class of scribes, new cultural sensibilities about individuality, unprecedented levels of literacy, and mainstream access to written materials.However, it is possible that the overall literacy rate was less than one percent of the entire population. The creation of literature was thus an elite exercise, monopolized by a scribal class attached to government offices and the royal court of the ruling pharaoh. However, there is no full consensus among modern scholars concerning the dependence of ancient Egyptian literature on the sociopolitical order of the royal courts...African literature - WikipediaPrecolonial literatureExamples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. In Ethiopia, there is a substantial literature written in Ge'ez going back at least to the fourth century AD; the best-known work in this tradition is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings." One popular form of traditional African folktale is the "trickster" story, in which a small animal uses its wits to survive encounters with larger creatures. Examples of animal tricksters include Anansi, a spider in the folklore of the Ashanti people of Ghana; Ijàpá, a tortoise in Yoruba folklore of Nigeria; and Sungura, a hare found in central and East African folklore.Other works in written form are abundant, namely in North Africa, the Sahel regions of west Africa and on the Swahili coast. From Timbuktu alone, there are an estimated 300,000 or more manuscripts tucked away in various libraries and private collections, mostly written in Arabic but some in the native languages (namely Fula and Songhai).Many were written at the famous University of Timbuktu. The material covers a wide array of topics, including astronomy, poetry, law, history, faith, politics, and philosophy. Swahili literature similarly, draws inspiration from Islamic teachings but developed under indigenous circumstances. One of the most renowned and earliest pieces of Swahili literature being Utendi wa Tambuka or "The Story of Tambuka".As for the Maghreb, North Africans such as Ibn Khaldun attained great distinction within Arabic literature. Medieval North Africa boasted universities such as those of Fes and Cairo, with copious amounts of literature to supplement them.…