{"id":286,"date":"2018-12-12T10:25:41","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T15:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/?page_id=286"},"modified":"2026-03-19T08:25:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T12:25:20","slug":"my-neh-project","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/my-neh-project\/","title":{"rendered":"My NEH Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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My NEH Project<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\"project\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trans-Saharan Literacies: Writing across the Desert<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Fiona Mc Laughlin<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

NEH Fellow 2019-2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

[FEL-262387\u00a0African Writing Traditions in the Trans-Saharan World]<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

This project brings a sociolinguistic perspective to two writing traditions used by populations within and adjacent to the Sahara desert, to argue for the conceptualization of a trans-Saharan world of shared historical, religious, and linguistic influences.\u00a0 By showing these vernacular literacies to be robust everyday practices in many African societies, and by tracing their transmission and spread through pathways of Islamization, Islamic education, and pastoralist traditions, I strengthen the case for positing a trans-Saharan sphere of influence.\u00a0 This project contributes to an emerging strand of interdisciplinary research that questions the construction of the Sahara in scholarship, the colonial archive, and the popular imagination, as a barrier that has separated, among other things, the Maghreb from sub-Saharan Africa, White from Black, Muslim from “pagan,” and Arab from African.\u00a0 Based on historical currents of societal exchange, Islamization, and colonialism within the region, I formulate the Trans-Sahara as consisting of the three countries of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), the West African Sahel (Senegal, Mali, Niger), and the Saharan country of Mauritania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The two writing traditions I study are ajami<\/em>, or the writing of African languages in the Arabic script, and tifinagh<\/em>, a more restricted yet ancient and distinctive literacy used to write Berber languages such as Tashelhiyt in Morocco and Tamasheq in Mali and Niger. \u00a0My project engages in particular with the study of vernacular or “grassroots” literacies, so-called informal ways of writing that flourish independently of the dominant regime of literacy imposed by the colonial and postcolonial state through public education, and my focus on everyday literacy provides a counterpoint to the colonial construction of Africa as the \u2018oral continent.\u2019\u00a0As alternatives to the official francophone or arabophone regimes of language in the Trans-Sahara, ajami\u00a0<\/em>and tifinagh\u00a0<\/em>are counter-hegemonic literacies that constitute important writing practices for many Africans, even though they are generally overlooked in surveys of literacy in Africa.\u00a0 The choice of a writing system carries social meaning, and linguistic plurality, including multiple ways of writing, can be an active and useful strategy for participating in social life, including political and ideological contestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

*This project has been updated and revised to include writing in the Latin alphabet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related publications:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Mc Laughlin, Fiona.\u00a0 2025.\u00a0 “A Saharan archive and its afterlives.”\u00a0 Archival Science<\/em> 25(2).\u00a0 Click here to access.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Mc Laughlin, Fiona.\u00a0 2025.\u00a0 \u201cAjami\u00a0<\/em>writing practices in Atlantic-speaking Africa.\u201d\u00a0 In Friederike L\u00fcpke, ed.\u00a0 The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages<\/em>.\u00a0 Oxford University Press. Click here to access.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Mc Laughlin, Fiona & Karim Ouaras.\u00a0 2024.\u00a0 “Extreme landscapes” (with an example from the Algerian Hirak<\/em>).\u00a0 In Robert Blackwood, Stefania Tufi & Will Amos, eds.\u00a0 The Bloomsbury Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes<\/em>. London: Bloomsbury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Mc Laughlin, Fiona.\u00a0 2023.\u00a0 “Text as city: Dakar’s linguistic landscape.”\u00a0 In Deborah Pellow & Suzanne Scheld, eds.\u00a0 Africa and Urban Anthropology: Theoretical and Methodological Contributions from Contemporary Fieldwork.<\/em>\u00a0 London: Routledge.\u00a0 Click here to access.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Mc Laughlin, Fiona 2021.\u00a0 “The linguistic ecology of the Sahel.”\u00a0 In Leonardo A. Villal\u00f3n, ed.\u00a0 The Oxford Handbook of the African Sahel.<\/em>\u00a0 Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Mc Laughlin, Fiona.\u00a0 2015.\u00a0 \u201cLinguistic warscapes of northern Mali.\u201d\u00a0 Linguistic Landscape <\/em>1(3):213-242.\u00a0 Click here to access<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related podcast:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

La sociolinguistique de l’\u00e9crit dans le trans-Sahara. From a talk I gave at the Centre d\u2019\u00c9tudes Maghr\u00e9bines en Alg\u00e9rie in Oran in April, 2018.\u00a0 [In French]. Click here to access<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n


\n\"photo\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Niodior, Senegal (Photograph by Adrian Roitberg)<\/p>\n\n\n\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/section>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":479,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"featured_post":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-286","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/479"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/286\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/fmcl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}