Privately Empowered responds to the lack of adequate attention paid to Islam in Africa in comparison to Islam in the Middle East and the Arab world. Shirin Edwin points to the tight embrace between Islam and politics that has rendered Islamic feminist discourse historically and thematically contextualized in regions where Islamic feminism evolves in tandem with the nation-state and is commonly understood in terms of activism, social affiliations, or struggles for legal reform. In Africa itself, Islam bears the burden of being a “foreign” presence that is considered injurious to African Muslim women’s success. Edwin examines the fictional works of the northern Nigerian novelists Zaynab Alkali, Abubakar Gimba, and Hauwa Ali due to the texts’ emphases on personal and private engagement, Islamic ritual and prayer in the quotidian, and observance of Qur’anic injunctions. Analysis of these texts connects the ways in which Muslim women in northern Nigeria balance their spiritual habits in ever changing configurations of their personal and private domains. The spiritual universe of African Muslim women may be one where Islam is not the source of their problems or their legislative and political activity, but a spiritual activity that can exist devoid of activist or political forms.

In his late twenties, Doug Meyer-Cuno decided to abandon his budding corporate career to found his own company. He would go on to grow Carolina Ingredients from a one-person operation into a multimillion-dollar manufacturing company with an international customer base, eventually selling the company to Mitsubishi. The pages within detail and examine the recipe Doug used for his own success to help others find their own, categorized into five main principles: Vision, Core Culture Values, Authenticity, Transparency, and Gratitude. The Recipe for Empowered Leadership: 25 Ingredients for Creating Value and Empowering Others recounts the lessons Doug learned along that journey, from facing down his micromanager tendencies to embracing servant leadership as a coach and mentor to his team. Brimming with easy-to-read leadership strategies and the life-changing "defining moments" that developed them, Doug reveals the value that a strong, yet grateful leader adds to any organization and how to incorporate those principles into your own leadership practice and life.

Focusing on the term empowerment this book examines the various meanings given to the concept of empowerment and the many ways power can be expressed - in personal relationships and in wider social interactions.

The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an expansion of critical approaches to African literature. The Routledge Handbook of African Literature is a one-stop publication bringing together studies of African literary texts that embody an array of newer approaches applied to a wide range of works. This includes frameworks derived from food studies, utopian studies, network theory, eco-criticism, and examinations of the human/animal interface alongside more familiar discussions of postcolonial politics. Every chapter is an original research essay written by a broad spectrum of scholars with expertise in the subject, providing an application of the most recent insights into analysis of particular topics or application of particular critical frameworks to one or more African literary works. The handbook will be a valuable interdisciplinary resource for scholars and students of African literature, African culture, postcolonial literature and literary analysis. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.