Christopher Tounsel

Associate Professor
Director of Graduate Studies
Director, African Studies Program
Christopher Tounsel

Contact Information

Smith 212A

Biography

Ph.D., History, University of Michigan, 2015
M.A., History, University of Michigan, 2012
B.A., History, Duke University, 2009
Curriculum Vitae (200.74 KB)

Christopher Tounsel is an historian of modern Sudan, specializing in the functions of race and religion as political technologies. He is the author of Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan (Duke University Press, 2021) and Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity (Cornell University Press, 2024). Chosen Peoples, which explores the ways that Southern Sudanese intellectuals used Judeo-Christian Scriptures to frame their revolutionary work against the Sudanese state, was named a Finalist for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora's Outstanding First Book Award and a Finalist for the Christianity Today Book Award (History/Biography). Bounds of Blackness, which unpacks the vacillating approaches that African Americans have taken to the Sudanese state from the late nineteenth-century to the Obama administration, received honorable mention for the International Studies Association Book Award (Diplomatic Studies section).

Professor Tounsel has published several peer-reviewed articles that appear in journals including African Studies Review, Journal of African American HistoryJournal of Africana Religions, Journal of Eastern African Studies, Journal of Religious History, and Social Sciences and Missions.

Dr. Tounsel has received funding to support his research from organizations including the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (now Institute for Citizens & Scholars), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Council of Overseas American Research Centers. In 2012, during South Sudan’s first year of independence, he served on an archival organizing project at the South Sudan National Archive in the national capital, Juba. Working alongside local and foreign scholars and staff, this project organized and preserved materials documenting the new nation’s history.

Professor Tounsel currently serves on the African Studies Association’s Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize committee, sits on the executive board of the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanitiesand directs the University of Washington’s African Studies Program.

As a commentator on Sudanese and South Sudanese affairs, he has provided interviews for outlets including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Human Rights Watch, and NPR's Throughline.

Awards

Honorable Mention, 2025 International Studies Association Book Award (Diplomatic Studies Section)
Finalist, 2022 Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) First Book Award
Finalist, 2022 Christianity Today Book Award (History/Biography)
2019 Career Enhancement Fellow, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

Research

Selected Research

Courses Taught

Graduate Study Areas

Division: Africa & the Middle East

Students may work with Professor Tounsel to develop a field in African history focused on
North Africa and/or sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial and postcolonial eras. The field
could concern social, political, religious, and economic subjects of study including slavery and
abolition, the Scramble for Africa, resistance and nationalism, Pan-Africanism, Christianity and
Islam, and other subjects. Students will work with Professor Tounsel to develop a course of
study that incorporates canonical scholarship, general and nuanced coverage, and specific
themes tailored to their interests and needs.

Division: Comparative Histories (Comparative Colonialisms)

Students may work with Professor Tounsel to develop a field of Comparative Colonialisms that
focuses on 18-20 th century imperialism in Africa, Asia, and the Atlantic World. The field could
examine colonial regimes following the “Scramble for Africa,” social and political connections
between Africa and the non-African world, and networks/solidarities forged between colonized
populations in Africa and beyond. Special attention is given to print media, state and non-state
actors, intra- and inter-state organizations, and religious institutions.

Division: Comparative Histories (Comparative Ethnicity and Nationalism)*

Students may work with Professor Tounsel to develop a field of Comparative Ethnicity and
Nationalism that focuses on racial, ethnic, and religious nationalism in the colonial and
postcolonial worlds. The field could explore such areas as Pan-Africanism, colonial and
postcolonial liberation movements, Church-State relations, political theologies, and politically-
active non-state actors.

 

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