Academic Team:
Mokaya Bosire (mokaya@uoregon.edu)
First-Year Experience Seminar Instructor
Ally Ikehara (aikehara@uoregon.edu)
FIG Assistant
9 credits
UGST 109 First Year Experience Seminar - 1 credit
CRN: 16249: W: 4:00-4:50pm, STB 251
SWAH 101 First Year Swahili – 4 credits
CRN: 15174: MTWRF: 12:00-12:50pm, MCK 157 GLBL 101
Introduction to International Issues – 4 credits
CRN: 12346: MW: 10:00-11:20am, LLCS 101, +DIS CRN: 12350: F: 1:00-1:50pm, MCK 473
About the FIG:
Swahili is the fastest growing lingua franca in East, Central & Southern Africa. This FIG takes you on a journey [Swahili: Safari] of contemporary issues affecting Africa through the lens of the Swahili language, Culture & Peoples. Through FLR 225 & Global Studies, students get to interrogate issues like development, lingering effects of colonialism, climate change and the breath-taking culture of the Swahili Nation [food, music, pop culture]. Students will experience the behind-the-scenes of Africa and answer questions like: What is a day like in Africa? What is the worldview of the Swahili Nation and what do they consider development?
Through multi-media texts, guest presentations and other out of class activities, students get to experience Swahili culture and interact with Swahili community on and off-Campus. Towards the end of the program, students get to cook and savor a delicious Swahili dish with native Swahili speakers. Karibuni!
SWAH 101 First Year Swahili - Major satisfying course, 5-credits
Introduction to Swahili, stressing speaking, reading, writing, and comprehension skills. At the UO, Swahili satisfies the Foreign language requirements and also the African Studies Minor requirements. Swahili is the major language of East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) including parts of Mozambique, Zambia, DRC, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, Mauritius and the Comoros. It is also spoken in the East African diaspora – wherever East Africans are domiciled away from the region. Spoken by over 200 million people, Swahili is the most widely spoken African language and increasingly becoming a major world language with at least 100 Colleges and Universities outside of East Africa teaching it! You have come to the right place for global engagement.
GLBL 101 Introduction to International Issues - CoreEd or major satisfying course
Hunger, intellectual property, global warming, arms trade, water rights, resource depletion, civil war, genocide, biodiversity loss, terrorism, education, global financial inequities, and immigration: These a just a few examples of the sometimes overwhelming list of challenges we face in a highly globalized world. Some are new but most have been with us for thousands of years. What have changed significantly and rapidly are our mobility and our access to information and images. Issues which a few decades ago may have seemed distant and disconnected are now thrust upon us or at least accessible through various media. Among the wide range of problems and issues faced by people throughout the world, who decides which issues get priority and attention? What informs your own sense of compassion and focus? Does our heightened sense of connection move us more quickly to resolution or to greater cynicism?
The course is designed to meet the social science group-satisfying general education requirement. As the syllabus demonstrates, GLBL 101 covers a cross-section of issues, perspectives and scholarly modes of analysis by those working in the field of international studies. The course subject matter is broad, covering issues such as hunger, intellectual property, global warming, arms trade, water rights, resource depletion, civil war, genocide, biodiversity loss, terrorism, education, global financial inequities, and immigration. The course is grounded in the social sciences with readings and lecture material largely informed by the fields of human geography, sociology, political science, and social psychology. The course compels students to consider ways in which current international issues are framed by popular media, various stakeholders, and academicians (from the social sciences).
Meet Your Instructor and FIG Assistant!