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Christina Davidson

Assistant Professor of History
Christina Davidson
Pronouns She / Her / Hers Email christina.davidson@usc.edu

Research & Practice Areas

African diaspora, Caribbean, Latin America, Dominican Republic & Haiti, Black internationalism, U.S. empire, diplomatic history, African diaspora religion, Protestant missions, race and nation building, 19th and early 20th centuries Americas

Biography

Professor Davidson is an interdisciplinary historian with specializations in Latin American & Caribbean history, African American Studies, and Religious Studies. Her first book, Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation (2024), explores diplomatic and cultural relations between the Dominican Republic and the United States in the late nineteenth century. Her articles have appeared the Journal of Africana Religions, the Journal of African American History, and the Journal of the Civil War Era, among others. She has received funding from the Fulbright-Hayes DDRA fellowship, the New York Public Library, the Social Science Research Center, and African American Intellectual Historical Society in support of her research.

Education

  • Ph.D. History, Duke University, 5/2017
  • B.A. Latin American Studies, Yale University, 5/2009
    • John C. Danforth Center Postdoctoral Research Associate, Washington University in Saint Louis, 2020 – 2022
    • Charles Warren Center Postdoctoral Research Associate, Harvard University, 2018 – 2020

  • Research Specialties

    African diaspora, Caribbean, Latin America, Dominican Republic & Haiti, Black internationalism, U.S. empire, diplomatic history, African diaspora religion, Protestant missions, race and nation building, 19th and early 20th centuries Americas

  • Book

    • Davidson, C. C. (2024). Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Book Chapters

    • Davidson, C. C. Mission, Migration, and Contested Authority: Building an AME Presence in Haiti in the Nineteenth Century. Global Faith, Worldly Power: Evangelical Internationalism and U.S. EmpireJohn Corrigan, Melani McAlister, and Axel Schäfer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.2022.70-96.
    • Davidson, C. C. (2022). An Evangelical Occupation: The Racial and Imperial Politics of US Protestant Missions in the Dominican Republic. Religion and US Empire: Critical New Histories pp. 203-228. New York: New York University Press.
    • Davidson, C. C. (2022). What Hinders?: African Methodist Expansion from the U.S. South to Hispaniola. Reconstruction and Empire: The Legacies of Abolition and Union Victory for an Imperial Age pp. 54-78. New York: Fordham University Press.

    Journal Article

    • Davidson, C. C. (2021). An Organic Union: Theorizing Race, Nation, and Imperialism in the Black Church. Journal of African American History. Vol. 106 (4), pp. 577-600.
    • Davidson, C. C. (2020). Redeeming Santo Domingo: North Atlantic Missionaries and the Racial Conversion of a Nation. Church History. Vol. 89 (1), pp. 74-100.
    • Davidson, C. C. (2017). Disruptive Silences: The A.M.E. Church and Dominican-Haitian Relations. Journal of Africana Religions. Vol. 5 (1), pp. 1-25.
    • Davidson, C. C. (2015). Black Protestants in a Catholic Land: The AME Church in the Dominican Republic 1899-1916. New West Indian Guide. Vol. 89 (3-4), pp. 258-288.
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