Global Perspectives Unit 1: Africa

HISTORY:   Watch Origins from Africa's Great Civilizations by PBS.   MAP WORK: Watch each of these videos at least three times, or however many necessary to feel like you have them memorized.  LITERATURE:  Read Things Fall Apart chapters 14-19, pp.130-167

LITERATURE: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Genre:  Historical Fiction, Tragedy Background:  Achebe was born on November 16, 1930, in Ogidi, a large village in Nigeria. Although he was the child of a Protestant missionary and received his early education in English, his upbringing was multicultural, as the inhabitants of Ogidi still lived according to many aspects of traditional Igbo (formerly written as Ibo) culture.  Things Fall Apart is set in this same area, though the country of Nigeria did not exist during the late 19th century when this story takes place. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in the late 1950's towards the end of the colonial era. One of the reasons this book is so important is that it represents the first time a story of Africa was told by an African to the English-speaking world.  Prior to this book, stories about Africa and Africans were written primarily by, and from the perspective of, white Europeans. Achebe challenged the traditional White ...

“Maps are like milk: their  information is perishable , and it is wise to check the date.”  “Like guns and crosses,  maps can be good or bad , depending on who’s holding them, who they’re aimed at, how they’re used, and why" Mark Monmoneir, Syracuse University of Geography Author of How to Lie with Maps How do the maps you look at,  impact the way you see the world? Watch the video and then check it out for yourself! Take a few minutes to explore this  mapping tool  which helps show the problems with the Mercator map. What happens when you type in "Russia" and move that country south to the equator? What happens when you type in "Dem. Rep. Congo" and move it north over Europe? What happens when you move Brasil over the United States? South Up?   South-up Peters projection.   Daniel R. Strebe ,  CC BY-SA North is up, right?  Only by convention . There’s no scientific reason why north is any more "up" than south. Equally, we could do east-...