Shit I Have to Teach in Twenty Minutes
A podcast for history teachers or anyone in a hurry. Eric and Rob interview historians about what are the important concepts about a given topic and they provide free lesson plans aligned with that discussion.
Shit I Have to Teach in Twenty Minutes
30. The Swahili Coast with Stephanie Wynne-Jones
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Rob and Eric are joined by Dr. Stephanie Wynne-Jones to discuss teaching about the history of the Swahili Coast. Professor Wynne-Jones is the Mandela Magdalene Memorial Fellow at Magdalene College in Cambridge, England, and she is an archeologist of Africa whose work includes excavations of early towns of Zanzibar and large-scale excavations at the World Heritage Site of Songo Mnara. She begins by providing some basic definitions for the Swahili Coast. It is a region of East Africa from the Horn of Africa to Mozambique that is populated by a string of settlements that interacted with the Indian Ocean trade community and each other. Those settlements share certain characteristics including that they were urban, mercantile, and Muslim. They exported a variety of products including timber, high carbon iron, gold, and enslaved people. The architecture of these communities, specifically the mosques, reveal the various luxury goods they imported like fine porcelain from China and glazed ceramics from Arabia. She also emphasizes that recent research demonstrates that these communities were African, challenging earlier colonial histories that argued incorrectly that the settlements were composed solely of Arab people. She notes that new DNA studies reveal the complex nature of family relationships across the Indian Ocean with DNA evidence connecting East Africa to family lines in Arabia, Persia, South Asia, and China.
Lesson Plans and resources:
The "Swahili Coast through Video” Lesson can be found at https://bit.ly/4kBhoLk
The “Swahili Coast and the Indian Ocean” lesson can be found at https://bit.ly/4z0OibR
Credits
Opening theme music, “Bossa Bossa,” created by Clare Howard www.clarehoward.com Music supported by the National Council for History Education www.ncheteach.org
Transition theme music, “The Clock is Ticking,” created by Emily Hahn.
Logo artwork created by Jessica Goldman.
Shit I Have to Teach in 20 Minutes is produced by Eric Hahn and Rob Good. Audio and video editing by Sebastian Rosales.
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