ABSTRACT
An American curious about Africa living in the nineteenth century would have found fewer sources of information than an American living in the twenty-first century. If he or she learned about Africa, it would have been primarily through popular magazines and periodic world fairs and exhibitions. In the 1970s, scholars of Africa realized that American high school textbooks were filled with stereotypes about sub-Saharan Africa. Western media, by presenting or excluding certain understandings of Africa, have an enormous power to influence how we think of Africa and reinforce our assumptions and stereotypes of Africa as violent, hopeless, and in need of Western help. In the 1990s and after, National Geographic continued to run articles on Africa, but they tended to feature animals. In 1998 Disney expanded its treatment of Africa with Animal Kingdom, an animal theme park located near Disney World.
