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Africa has an image.
Elephants roaming the plains.
Lions roaring through the night.
Giraffes climbing the hilly mountainside.
But when professor Betty Levitov traveled through Africa, she brought a new factor to the wilderness – tigers.
Doane tigers, that is.
Levitov, an English professor at Doane College, wrote a book about her experiences with her students in their 1998 and 2002 semesters abroad. Her book, “Africa on Six Wheels: A Semester on Safari”, discusses her time with students in a van and the learning experience that started out in Tanzania and ended in Cape Town. First-year students are reading Levitov’s book as part of their LAR class, or first-year seminar, curriculum.
“It was our classroom on wheels,” Levitov said.
Levitov, who has enjoyed the African atmosphere by visiting 27 of Africa’s 53 countries, intertwines her experiences before and during the semester in her book. She said she started writing her book in May 2003 and spent five to six hours a day writing the book.
Levitov received a helping hand from Doane in writing her book. She took a sabbatical for the 2003-2004 school year and said she appreciated the time away from classes.
“That freed me up, because I could never have devoted the time I needed while I was teaching,” Levitov said.
Levitov said she worked constantly on her book until the end of the summer of 2004 and then started sending chapters of her book to family and friends.
“When I started to get good feedback, I had a lot of confidence that I would be able to publish it,” Levitov said.
She said she shipped a copy of her book to the University of Nebraska Press, and theyloved it. The editors at Nebraska Press had one problem with the book -- it was too long. Levitov said she chopped and rewrote her book until it was down to the correct size and her book was published on April 1, 2007.
Levitov said she grew up reading about King Tut and remembers having Tarzan read to her. Though she said she’s not really sure what drew her interest towards Africa, she went to Africa as a volunteer for three years.
After Levitov came to Nebraska with some volunteer friends from Africa, she said she planned on being here for a year and had been here since. Levitov has been teaching at
Doane College since 1983 and is teaching one of the LAR classes, Jambo Africa, featuring her book this semester.
