FLAS: Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships. Federally-funded FLAS fellowships are available for the study of African languages at the University of Kansas. The FLAS website includes current information on application procedures, deadlines, and meetings that are held for the benefit of interested students.
Swahili Instruction at the University of Kansas. Swahili classes at the University of Kansas are taught in the African and African American Studies Department. From the departmental site, click on Language Courses for a list of African languages taught within the department.
Swahili Language and Literature. Library research guide compiled by Kenneth P. Lohrentz, Librarian for African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Kansas Libraries.
National Resources
Africa South of the Sahara : Selected Internet sites. Compiled by Karen Fung, African Studies Librarian at Stanford University. An excellent up-to-date guide on Internet resources on all aspects of sub-Saharan Africa. For Swahili resources listed on the site, go to “Search the Africa Pages” and enter search terms “Swahili” and “Kiswahili”. This will yield a list of online sites with information on a broad range of topics.
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA). CARLA is one of the U.S. Department of Education's Title VI National Language Resource Centers, whose role is to improve the nation's capacity to teach and learn foreign languages. Offers various opportunities for professional development and teaching resources to second language teachers.
Kamusi Gold: Global Online Living Dictionary. An online dictionary with over 60,000 Swahili language terms, originally established by Yale University. Also includes terms for other languages of the world.
KIKO – Kiswahili kwa Komputa. A guide to Swahili pronunciation, grammar, and general background information about the Swahili language. A multimedia course integrating the use of video, audio, and text.
Swahili Language Acquisitions at Columbia University. Lists dictionaries and glossaries, grammars and phrasebooks, linguistics, literature (incl. readers and other texts), and related works in English. Comp. by Yusuuf Caruso, Librarian for African Studies at Columbia University.
Swahili Language on the Internet. A very thorough and useful guide with links to many online sites that provide information pertaining to Swahili language resources. Compiled by Yusuuf Caruso, Librarian for African Studies at Columbia University.
UCLA Language Materials Project. A very useful site that includes an online bibliographic database of teaching and learning materials for over 150 less commonly taught languages. Includes extensive links to other online sources.
International Resources
Bibliography of Swahili Literature, Linguistics, Culture and History. Swahili Forum 10 (2003). Comp. by Thomas Geider. (Mainz, Germany : Dept. of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, 2003). An extensive 100-pg. bibliography listing publications gleaned from a wide range of sources specializing in Swahili scholarship.
Bibliography of Swahili Literature, Linguistics, Culture and History : Update 2003-2009. Swahili Forum 18 (2011). "This bibliography is an update of Thomas Geider’s comprehensive bibliography of 100 pages which he published in Swahili Forum 10 (2003). Thomas Geider had almost finished it when he fell ill in April 2010. It has been completed and edited by the editors of Swahili Forum, and comprises mainly works published between 2003 and 2009. Also included are some works published in 2001 and 2002 which came to Thomas Geider’s attention after he had completed his 2003 bibliography."—Swahili Forum Website.
Language and Popular Culture in Africa. "Language and Popular Culture in Africa is a web-based project set up by Johannes Fabian and Vincent de Rooij of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. The main aim of LPCA is to document and further the study of expressions of popular language and culture in Africa. This is accomplished in two ways. First of all, by making available, in LPCA Text Archives and Archives of Popular Swahili, texts that express and mediate forms of African popular culture, and secondly, by publishing the Journal of Language and Popular Culture in Africa which publishes studies of African popular texts."—LPCA Website
Swahili Language and Culture : Kanga Writings. Site created by Hassan Ali, Ottawa, Canada. Includes a chart of Swahili sayings and proverbs that appear on the colorful cotton cloth with Swahili inscriptions worn commonly by East African women. The chart also includes translations into English, links to many beautifully colored examples of cloth with Kanga writings, and notes on the history of Kanga writings.
Swahili Manuscripts Project at SOAS. Swahili Forum 9 (2002) / by Yahya Ali Omar and Annmarie Drury. An article featuring the library holdings of the School of Oriental and African Studies which comprises the largest public collection of Swahili manuscripts in Britain. The collection includes more than 250 manuscripts dating from the 1790s to the 1970s, contained in the papers of William Taylor, Alice Werner, William Hichens, Wilfred Whiteley, Jan Knappert and Yahya Ali Omar. The library also holds microfilms of the manuscripts that were deposited by JWT Allen at the University of Dar es Salaam.
Swahili Studies Bibliography. "This bibliography is based on one initially compiled by Kelly Askew and is now open to additions from members of the Tanzanian Studies Association. The long-term intent is to compile a complete bibliography of scholarly material about the Swahili coast published since 1990 (though it also includes some earlier publications). Subject matters broadly construed might include History, Anthropology, Geography, Political Science, Public Health, Sociology, Language, Linguistics, Literature, Art and Art History, Education, Resource Management, Parks Management, Geology, and Ecology. Source items might include any scholarly articles, books, book chapters, review articles, research reports, and consultancy reports which would be available through the Inter-library loan services of universities."—Tanzania Studies Association (TSA) Website.
