This fall, University Housing recognized Bilal Humeidan and Soetan Olusegun Akolawole as Honored Instructors for their work in the instruction of Arabic and Yoruba (respectively). Each was nominated by their students for this recognition. Congratulations to them both!

Segun joined us this year as a graduate student and TA after spending 2009–2010 on campus as a visiting scholar. He has also taught for the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where he completed his M.A. in Yoruba literature. His present research interests include African language pedagogy, mythology, and African cinema.

Bilal joined the department as a graduate student in 2008 after earning an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the Jordan University of Science and Technology and one year as a Fulbright graduate assistant at Wake Forest.

Information about the University Housing Honored Instructors program is available at http://www.housing.wisc.edu/academics/honoredinstructors.

This August, the International Federation of Translators (FIT) presented Daniel Kunene with the Karel Čapek Medal for translation of a language with limited diffusion. He was recognized for My Child! My Child!, a translation of CLS Nyembezi’s novel Mntanami! Mntanami! from Zulu into English. Dr. Kunene is a Professor Emeritus of our department, having retired from teaching in 2003.

For further details, as well as for an expression of Professor Kunene's affection for the music of vowels and his . . . somewhat lesser affection for consonants, see the related post on Books LIVE, and the video or transcript of his acceptance speech.