As an afterword and outlook, this concise paper reviews and summarizes Swahili studies with a focus on its different historical stages. The author brings together different perspectives on Swahili based on dominant directions in Swahili research during the 20th century and also presents an outlook on potential further directions in the study of the language, with a specific focus on dialectological and variationist studies, as also found in this special issue.

This contribution, enriched by Kai Kresse’s dibaji, is a collective Exercise – a mazungumzo – in ‘Concepting’ Uswahili that, rather than pointing to answers, conclusions or definitions, opens up to further debates on Swahili Studies. ‘Critical Swahili Studies’ cannot simply be the study of Swahili language and literature (only); nor the study of Swahili culture and society (only). It is to be qualified by a critical way of engagement, and a concern for the study of ‘human social life’, exploring different levels of meaningfulness for people on the Swahili coast, and within the wider Swahili context, with a view to the parameters of its validity. It includes perspectives on ‘thinking society’ and ‘understanding life’ from within, how it is lived, grounded upon, and seen and expressed through the lens of Swahili language-and-beyond-language. Critical Swahili Studies, then, will be about sensitive and engaged research on issues that are at the heart of society in Swahili contexts and with a focus on human experience, through the lens of a Swahili conceptual framework.

Elena Bertoncini Zúbková, internationally renowned scholar and esteemed teacher of Swahili language and literature, passed away on 19th September 2018 in Pisa, Italy. In this obituary, her disciple Flavia Aiello pays tribute to her life and her major achievements. She highlights that Elena Bertoncini Zúbková educated generations of scholars in Italy and across Europe who specialised in Swahili studies, and had a remarkable impact on the advancement of Swahili literary studies. May she rest in peace.

At the core of this special issue lies an apparently simple question: What is Swahili Studies? The “critical” perspective entails a question about both epistemological foundations and different versions or notions of “Swahili Studies” – also mirrored in the many institutions teaching Swahili all over the globe. In the same vein, this special issue shows Swahili Studies not as a fixed discipline delimited by geographical, historical, and disciplinary boundaries, and defined canons, but as a subject of an ongoing conversation. The twelve contributions of this special issue deliberately take different perspectives on Swahili Studies: 1. Swahili Studies as mirrored in a variety of different global histories of institutionalization; 2. Critically reflecting upon the notion of “Swahili”, its problematic geographical and linguistic fixations; and 3. Considering the specifically critical role of Uswahili/Mswahili. The aim of this special issue is to hint at the dynamic notions of Swahili – difficult to delimit in clear-cut terms of geography, culture or linguistic parameters. The issue does not give fixed answers or definitions, rather it opens up the multiple possibilities that are of, and from within, Swahili Studies.

This article discuss the uses and teaching of the Swahili language in Egypt. Today, the North African country considers Swahili language to be one of the most important languages in Africa; which is used as a lingua franca even by fellow Nile River countries. There is a relatively long history of Swahili language teaching; beginning in 1967 with the establishment of the Department of African Languages, within the Faculty of Languages and Translation at the Al-Azhar University. Since then, many students have learned Swahili and become either Swahili teachers; editors in Egyptian Radio for East African countries; or Swahili language translators at Al-Azhar centres. The establishment of other departments at three other universities - namely, Ain Shams University, Cairo University, and most recently Aswan University - has helped to grow and develop Swahili language teaching. Egypt continues to take steps to advance the teaching and use of Swahili language with the aim of strengthening relations between it and several East and Central African countries, where it remains the main language of communication.

The rise of Swahili in the American academy in the 1960s was prompted by two forces: African identity politics among African Americans, on the one hand, and the politics of the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union, on the other. Both these sources of Swahili ascendency were themselves a response to the unfolding dynamics and counter-dynamics of independence politics in “Swahiliphone” Africa, that is in the East African nations where the Swahili language was in wide use. But now that the Cold War is over more or less, and the nature of African American politics has undergone significant change in focus, what is the fate and direction of Swahili studies in the USA? This is the central question that this article will seek to address as it considers, at the same time, the shifting disciplinary areas with which the study of Swahili has been associated. In the process the article will also touch on the state of Swahili studies in some other spaces of the world.

This paper is an epistemological and reflexive account of half a century of research on the Waswahili through the medium of Kiswahili. The first section asks who ‘we’ (scholars) think ‘they’ (subjects of research) are, showing how claims to Swahili identity vary according to historical, geographical and political contexts. It also points out the dangers of orientalism and exoticism and advocates the acknowledgement of the potential for local people to be fellow intellectuals. The second section discusses who ‘they’ (subjects of research) consider themselves to be and how the claiming of Swahili identity has shifted, again according to historical and geographical contexts. In the third section there is a consideration of who ‘they’ think ‘we’ scholars are, since the success of research depends a great deal on how local people perceive us, including by race, gender and education. Importantly, such success also depends on a number of credentials including fluent Kiswahili, knowledge of Islam and familiarity through multiple visits. The final section discusses who we researchers think we ourselves are, the purpose of our research and for whom we write about it. This raises questions around the ethics of research – taking and giving back data and acknowledging that the creation of knowledge is very much a joint venture between locals and researchers.

In her article, Daniela Waldburger argued for the inclusion of varieties from the Greater Swahili Area in Swahili lessons. She discussed what it means to be a Mswahili and argued that while identification as a Mswahili can be linked to various aspects, competence in Swahili remains unquestioned as a necessary condition for identification as a Mswahili. In this paper, I would like to go a step further and question the relationship between competence in the Swahili language and the relevance of the notion of Swahili nature or Swahilité to a person. More specifically, I would like to reflect on the relevance of the notion of Swahilité in a diasporic space, more precisely the Franco-Comorian community in France, drawing on data from fieldwork in Bordeaux (2010 and 2011) and Marseille (2012).

Cognitive linguistics studies have been developing since 1980s and represent one of the major frameworks of linguistic research. This article provides an overview of the limited number of studies on Kiswahili which have been conducted using this theoretical model, while outlining the advantages of this approach in various areas of research and multiple topics. It is also demonstrated that cognitive Linguistics approach has benefits for teaching Kiswahili as a foreign language.

The 19th-century Swahili poet Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy composed several poems in opposition to the Omani Empire’s invasion of his native Mombasa. In this paper, I focus on one such poem, “Ngoma ya Kizungup’ia”, which has not been studied as comprehensively as many others. I unpack the cultural, choreographic, and poetic significance of the kiumbizi dance form, which serves as one of its central tropes. In light of Muyaka’s poetic invocation of this dance and the historical, political and performative context of 19th-century Swahili war poetry, I apply the rhetorical and literary framework of Signifyin(g) to gain a deeper understanding of the political intentions and poetic execution of Muyaka’s resistance poetry, as distinguished contextually and ideologically from his earlier war dialogue poems. Finally, I reflect on my own experience translating the poem into English using methods of creative transposition, and conclude that the inextricability of the poem's hermeneutic and poetic values renders it especially difficult to translate.