Media, Race, and the Sudanese Civil War | Global Africa Transcontinental Seminar Series

In April 2023, fighting broke out in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. In the ongoing conflict, thousands have been killed, millions displaced, and millions more require urgent humanitarian assistance. In the midst of it all, another element has become a focal part of this trauma: the media. In this talk, Dr. Christopher Tounsel (University of Washington) will discuss the war’s historical background, address why Western media has been comparatively silent in its coverage, and show how one community’s response to the conflict sheds light on the intersections of race, media, and the African Diaspora.

Christopher Tounsel is Director of African Studies and associate professor of history at the University of Washington. An historian of the Sudan, Tounsel is the author of Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan and Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity.

The Global Africa Transcontinental Seminar brings together UW African Studies, the Department of History at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, and the African Program at Sciences Po Paris, France, and aims to engage scholars and students around contemporary research on “African Worlds” or ”Global Africa.” The virtual monthly lectures and discussions will connect communities of scholars across the humanities and social sciences in North America, Africa, and Europe to discuss themes such as Black radical politics, decolonial feminisms, African technologies, environmental history, postcolonial migration, religion and modernity, and language. Through consideration of the ways in which the three continents have influenced each other and their respective institutional contexts, the seminar will bring original and situated perspectives on a range of topics and further a rich conversation across institutions, teaching traditions, and research.