Subject Areas |
Foreign Language
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Other |
History and Social Studies
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World History - Africa |
Literature and Language Arts
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World |
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Time Required |
| One to two class periods
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Skills |
| visual art analysis
research skills
summarizing and presenting information
critical thinking
Internet skills
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Date Posted |
| 4/12/2002 |
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Women in Africa: Tradition and Change
Introduction
While a single lesson plan cannot fully
explore the variety and complexity of African life, in this
lesson students can gain insight into the lives of some black women
in Sub-Saharan Africa by adopting a perspective that is in part
traditional, based on the arts of African village life, and
in part postcolonial, based on the work of African women writing
in English and French today. Students first examine a selection
of traditional African artworks that portray women within precolonial
family and community life. Then students explore the literature
that women have created in postcolonial Africa and present a
report on one writer, profiling her career and writing and commenting
on the part that traditional values play in her work. (This
second part of the lesson can be presented in English or French.)
Learning Objectives
(1) To learn about the role of women
in traditional African village life; (2) To understand the
contextual nature of artwork within traditional African village
life; (3) To become familiar with women writers of postcolonial
Africa; (4) To examine how the traditions of village life
influence postcolonial literature.
1
Begin by introducing students to the portrayal of women in
traditional African artwork, using the resources available
through EDSITEment at the Art
and Life in Africa Online website. In addition to three-dimensional
images of traditional art objects, this website provides a
multi-part commentary relating these objects to their context
in African village life. All the objects listed below are
accompanied by an online explanation of their relationship
to the traditional role of African women within the family
and community. To access these images, click Key
Moments in Life on the website's homepage, then select
the appropriate chapter and use the "Next" link to move forward
to the section indicated.
- Fertility
Figure (Ghana) -- Shows a woman nursing a child;
created to encourage procreation, the central role of women
within traditional African rural society. [Chapter: Newborn/Infancy,
Section 2]
- Girl's
Doll (Burkina Faso) -- Shows a woman in miniature,
with an elaborate hairstyle and the scarification patterns
that mark passages in life; represents for the girl the
ideal woman she hopes to become. [Chapter: Childhood,
Section 2]
- Sande
Mask (Sierra Leone) -- Shows the head of a woman
with an elaborate hairstyle and well-fed appearance; represents
the Mende ideal of feminine beauty and used to welcome an
adolescent girl into the community of women following initiation
rituals that mark her passage from childhood to adulthood.
[Chapter: Initiation,
Section 6]
- Pot Lid
(Congo) -- Shows a pot resting on three stones; does not
portray a woman but created as a means for Woyo women to
complain to their husbands about problems in the marriage
relationship, the message in this case being a reminder
that divorce requires only the scattering of the stones
that hold up the pot. [Chapter: Marriage
and Eligibility, Section 1]
- Primordial
Couple (Mali) -- Shows a man and woman, the man with
his arm over the woman's shoulder; represents the ideal
required for procreation, a bond of affection between individuals
that is distinct from the family bond created by the payment
of "bride-wealth" to obtain a wife. [Chapter: Marriage
and Eligibility, Section 2]
- Figure
Pair (Côte d'Ivoire) -- Shows a large
woman and a smaller man, the man with his arm around the
woman; created to promote fertility between a couple by
invoking the spirit-spouse of the husband and thus helping
the family achieve social success. [Chapter: Adulthood,
Section 1]
- Wunkirmian
Ladle (Liberia) -- Shows the head of a young woman
carved as the handle of a ladle; created to honor a woman
who is recognized by other women as the most hospitable
in the community, the ladle offers her an idealized portrait
of herself at the moment when she began her role as a wife
and mother. [Chapter: Elderhood,
Section 4]
Additional representations of women in traditional
African art, which echo many of the images noted above, can
be found at the Detroit
Institute of Arts website. Click "Collections" in the
righthand menu on the website's homepage, then select "African,
Oceanic, and New World Cultures" and under the heading "African
Art" click Queen
Mothers for images of a mask from Congo, a mother and
child sculpture from Cameroon, and a royal portrait bust from
Nigeria; then click Men
Who Dance as Women for images of masks from Angola, Sierra
Leone, and Mozambique.
2 Have
students examine and discuss these images in small groups.
After they have reviewed this gallery of African artworks,
have them summarize the traditional role of women in African
village life in a class discussion.
- Help students recognize that childbearing and childrearing
are the fundamental responsibilities of women in this society,
and the ultimate measure of their social status. The emphasis
on feminine beauty, physical development, and elaborate
hairstylings and scarification patterns are all related
to enhancing this procreative power. Similarly, the importance
of hospitality, health care, and housekeeping are all related
to a woman's responsibility for raising children who can
in turn procreate and so sustain the life of the community.
- Invite students to compare this view of a woman's role
in society with their own. Are there points of contact between
the two? Is a Barbie doll equivalent to the doll from Burkina
Faso? Are "beauty secrets" part of the passage from girlhood
to womanhood in both societies? Is marriage and raising
a family a goal the two societies share? What are the differences?
What does the students' society expect of women that traditional
African village society does not? What expectations in that
society are not found in the students' own?
3 Against
this background, have students explore how some women writers
have portrayed the lives of women in postcolonial African
society -- i.e., during the period since the late 1950s when
most European nations granted independence to their African
colonies. The aim in this part of the lesson is to help students
become familiar with a broad range of present-day African
women writers, including, if possible, those who write in
English and those who write in French. Have each student research
and report on one contemporary African woman writer, using
library resources or the EDSITEment resources listed below.
- At the Lire
les Femmes Ecrivains et les Littératures Africaines
website, students will find background on more than 100
African women writers, most of whom write in French. Students
can click Auteurs
on the homepage for an index of writers that indicates the
language in which they write. The names of Francophone writers
link to profiles in French that sketch the writer's career,
describe her major works, usually offer a brief excerpt,
and provide links to other Internet resources. Students
who do not read French can click "English Version" on these
profile pages for a translation that does not include excerpts.
Some writers whom students might want to investigate are
listed here with an indication of whether they write in
French (F) or English (E):
- At the African
Studies WWW website, students can click "
Web Links," then "Women Issues" for a link to the Association
of African Women Scholars website, which has a "Literature"
link on its homepage that leads to a variety of resources
(all in English):
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