Nana Asma'u's Instruction and Poetry for Present-day American Muslimahs

Abstract

In 1995 I whined to Dave Henige about the difficulties involved in producing a 753-page volume of 383 pages of translated poetry (each including a work number, language of the original, source of the text, an historical introduction, and related text section) containing three orthographies, four languages, 947 footnotes, 241 pages of barely-arranged Arabic-script (but not all Arabic language) facsimiles, six maps, three glossaries, two works cited lists (published and unpublished), two appendices, and an index – all without a copy editor, and for a press demanding camera-ready copy from two novices an ocean apart who had access only to primitive email (remember CompuServe?) that would scramble poetic verse and jumble margins. When I finally took a breath, he smiled. Dave loves a challenge, and loves even more, passing one on. “Write about it,” he said. Suddenly I found myself signed up for the “Technical Problems in Preparing Text and Translations for Camera-Ready Copy” Historical Texts Panel at ASA's 1996 meetings. But that was not enough for Dave. He also expected an article, which I duly produced: “This Will (Not) Be Handled By the Press: Problems and Their Solution in Preparing Camera-Ready Copy for The Collected Works of Nana Asma'u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodiyo 1793-1864” for History in Africa 25 (1998). In fact, it was Dave who rained on our anticipated title, “The Complete Works…,” dryly inquiring, “How can you be sure?” So it was “Collected Works…” instead.

Identification of Challenges in Teaching World Literature Course at Undergraduates Level

“…Literature has been widely used as a mode to instill moral and ethical values in the reader, and it is also a useful model of learning about the past and future. According to Mack (2011) literature has supplemented critical thinking since the inception of written communication. Literature teaches us the value of life, widens our cognition towards life, and prepares us for our future (Bakhtin, 2021).…”