This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a Mellon grant sponsored series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.

Today's conversation is with Christopher Tounsel, an historian of modern Sudan, with special focus on race and religion as political technologies. His first book, Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan (Duke 2021), was named a finalist for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora's Outstanding First Book Award and was a Finalist for the Christianity Today Book Award (History/Biography). His most recent book, Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity (Cornell, 2024), has received honorable mention for the International Studies Association Book Award (Diplomatic Studies section). He has provided Sudan-related commentary for outlets including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Human Rights Watch, and NPR's Throughline.