UT to offer African language, culture classes Yoruba courses first of their kind in 20 years By Brian Villalobos (Daily Texan Staff) August 26, 2002
A first-time offering on the fall 2002 course schedule ends a period of more than 20 years during which the University did not provide a course in an African language. First Year Yoruba I and Yoruba History and Culture, presently available through the Center for African and African American studies, mark the first classes ever offered in the study of the centuries-old African language and people.
"The pressure has been on for over 10 years for [UT] to teach a number of African languages," said Oloruntoyin Falola, a UT history professor of Yoruban ancestry who lobbied for the courses' inclusion. "We've all worked for it. We're all happy."
Edmund Gordon, director of the center, said that the courses are the result of a dedicated student effort.
"They came about basically because students from the African Students Association lobbied the dean, lobbied the provost, lobbied everybody," Gordon said. "We here at the center have been sort of riding the coattails of the student push in that area."
An estimated 20 million people worldwide speak Yoruba as their first language - more than those who speak Greek or inhabit Australia. Though the most considerable majority of speakers of Yoruba live in southwest Nigeria, Yoruban culture has exerted widespread global influence through out the African diaspora in Brazil, Cuba and other New World nations, Falola said.
The African diaspora refers to the spread of African religions, peoples and traditional ways of life beyond the African continent, as a result of slave trade.
Falola said that the study of Yoruba culture is very applicable to the lives of UT students who descended from Africans.
"A number of African-American students can trace their heritage back to West Africa," he said.
The Yoruba language course is part of a two-year sequence that will fulfill the University's foreign language requirement. Both courses are available under "ethnic studies."
The Center has selected Akinkunmi A. Alao, who taught Yoruba at Nigeria's Obafemi Awolowo University, to teach the courses. Gordon said that Alao has verbally accepted and will arrive from Nigeria this week to finalize arrangements.
"I think any university that does not [provide classes on varied cultures and societies] is not a university," Gordon said. "The University cannot be monocultural, and it never has been. Particularly in today's world, it is necessary to have a real education, a multicultural education."
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