Teaching Resources
Image by Bartek Sabela
Introduction to course and lesson plans
This is a space for course and lesson plans primarily on Western Saharan history, politics, cultural production and society. Feel free to download, use or share them. We would be grateful if you could let us know if you use any of the resources here. If you have any resources that you would be happy to share, please get in touch.
For an inventory of research on Western Sahara, see the vast bibliography compiled the International Academic Observatory on Western Sahara (OUISO).
Campaigning activity for a seminar on corporate complicity in conflicts/greenwashing/so-called “corporate social responsibility” or similar (Joanna Allan)
I have used various versions of this activity with undergraduate Politics and International Relations students as well as postgraduate Global Development students. Below are the PowerPoint slides for two versions of this activity. The first was for a one-hour postgraduate seminar on Global Development. The second was for a two-hour final year International Relations and Politics seminar on human security. Below the PowerPoint slides are the other materials necessary for the activity.
A two-hour session, syllabus and essay question on ‘Energy Humanities’ for a wider MA in Languages, Literatures and Cultures course (Joanna Allan)
I prepared and taught this session in the Modern Languages and Cultures department of Durham University, UK, in 2018. Students on this course were from a variety of modern languages backgrounds, and therefore all materials had to be available in English translation. Poetry by Saharawi writer Limam Boisha was used in the session in translation. Other key sources included a song by Nigerian musician Fela Kuti and a mobile phone game in which the player flies from the Tar Sands to the Great Lakes as a thunderbird protecting Turtle Island in protest at pipeline developments.
Available to download:
Lecture slides and seminar plans from a first-year Politics and International Relations degree course (Joanna Allan)
The slides below are from lectures and seminars that formed part of a wider 11-week course on ‘Democracy and Dictators’ at Northumbria University for which Western Sahara formed one case study amongst others, delivered in 2021.
- Slides from lecture on authoritarianism in occupied Western Sahara
- Seminar on authoritarianism in Western Sahara
- Slides from a lecture on eurocentrism and democracy with a focus on the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic
- Essay planning activity (part of a longer seminar) on eurocentrism and the case of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic
Resources from a first-year Hispanic Studies course (Joanna Allan)
The resources below were used as part of a five-week block of lectures and seminars on Western Sahara’s Friendship Generation poetry within a wider year-long course on ‘Conflict and Violence in the Spanish-speaking World.’
- Western Sahara block overview
- Dossier of Friendship Generation poetry freely available online
- Reading list from the 2017 course, with a brief update in 2019
- Lecture slides on Nonviolent Resistance and the place of poetry in it
- Slides from a lecture on representations of violence in Friendship Generation poetry
- Slides from a lecture giving a brief history of the Western Sahara conflict
- Seminar discussion questions and readings on nonviolent strategy and the arts
- Seminar on Zahra Hasnaoui’s work and representations of violence
Teaching Spanish language using the case of Western Sahara – resources developed by LSE Language Centre staff (Lourdes Hernández-Martín, Roser Martinez-Sanchez and Rafael Cruz)
These resources are shared with the permission of, and thanks to, Lourdes Hernández-Martín, Dr Roser Martinez-Sanchez and Rafael Cruz who developed them in 2017. The resources were originally shared as part of LSE’s ‘Spanish in Motion’ programme (videos for activities 2 and 4, detailed in the downloadable documents below, can also be found at this link). They can be used alongside a viewing of the documentary on the Western Sahara decolonial struggle ‘Children of the Clouds’ (Álvaro Longoria, 2012), or independently of it.
- Activities for A1-B2 levels
- Answers and advice for teachers, A1-B2 level activities
- Activities B2-C1 levels
- Answers and advice for teachers, B2-C1 level activities
- Photos and explanations for teachers
- Images to project for Activity 1