Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-swr86 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T18:58:46.209Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Study-Abroad and Cultural Exchange Programs to Africa: America’s Image of a Continent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

Mark Pires
Get access

Extract

America’s understanding, or perhaps more appropriately its misunderstanding, of Africa is based on a long history of explorer, traveler, and missionary experience recounted in travelogue and the popular press. For the most part, images of Africa expressed in these accounts portray a world of barbarous, uncivilized peoples living in the unbearable climes of torrid deserts and tropical swelter. Today, there is little evidence to suggest any fundamental change in these earlier perceptions. As Michael McCarthy comments, “[the] ‘dark continent’ image of Africa as a mixture of desert and jungle, savage beasts and beastly savages, has persisted to such an extent that it has become over time the essential way in which most Americans have come to understand African realities.”

Type
Overview of Study Abroad in Africa
Information
African Issues , Volume 28 , Issue 1-2 , 2000 , pp. 39 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2000 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Hickey, Dennis and Wylie, Kenneth, An Enchanting Darkness: The American Vision of Africa in the Twentieth Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; McCarthy, Michael, Dark Continent: Africa Seen by Americans (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

2. McCarthy, xvi.

3. Fair, Jo Ellen, “War, Famine, and Poverty: Race in the Construction of Africa’s Media Image,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 17, no. 2 (1993): 5–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hawk, Beverly G., ed., Africa’s Media Image (New York, US: Praeger, 1992)Google Scholar.

4. Hawk, 9.

5. Steen, Sara J., Academic Year Abroad, 23d ed. (New York, US: Institute for International Education, 1994)Google Scholar.

6. Steen. Since data reported by the IIE for the Middle East—which in this case includes Arabic-speaking North Africa—were not disaggregated by country, it is difficult to gauge the number of American students in the North Africa subregion. However, even if one combines the figures for sub-Saharan Africa and the entire Middle East, the total accounts for barely 5 percent of all U.S. students abroad in most years.

7. Barbara Burn, “Does Study Abroad Make a Difference?” Change, March/April 1985, 48-49.

8. These organizations include the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE); NAFSA: Association of International Educators; the National Consortium for Study in Africa (NCSA); and the United States Information Agency’s (USIA) University Affiliation Program.

9. Sobania, Neal W., “Inside or Outside the University? The Conundrum of U.S. Undergraduates in Africa,” in African Studies and the Undergraduate Curriculum, ed. Alden, Patricia, Lloyd, David, and Samatar, Ahmed (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 264 Google Scholar.

10. Evans, Norman, Experiential Learning: Its Assessment and Accreditation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), ixGoogle Scholar.

11. Sobania, 263.

12. Mortensen, Erik, “Experiential Education—Scandinavian Style,” International Education and Cultural Exchange 14, no. 1 (1978): 41 Google Scholar.

13. Pradervand, Pierre, Listening to Africa: Developing Africa from the Grassroots (New York, US: Praeger, 1989), 213 Google Scholar.

14. Millar-Wood, Jayne, Development Education in the United States, Global Education Reprint Series (Baltimore: Church World Service, 1981)Google Scholar.

15. Griffiths, I.L. and Binns, J.A., “Hunger, Help, and Hypocrisy: Crisis and Response to Crisis in Africa,” Geography 73, no. 1 (1988): 49 Google Scholar.

16. World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1981)Google Scholar.

17. Thomas Callaghy, “Africa: Falling off the Map?” Current History, January 1994, 36.

18. Michael Clough, “The United States and Africa: The Policy of Cynical Disengagement,” Current History, May 1992, 193-98.

19. Clough, “The United States and Africa,” 198.

20. Benjamin, Medea and Freedman, Andrea, Bridging the Global Gap: A Handbook to Linking Citizens of the First and Third Worlds (Cabin John, Md.: Seven Locks Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

21. Clough, Michael, Free at Last? U.S. Policy toward Africa and the End of the Cold War (New York, US: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

22. Burn, 48.

23. Michael Chege, “What’s Right with Africa?” Current History, May 1994, 197.