Middle East Studies

Publications and Book Series

Islamic Humanities seeks books that examine topics pertaining to Islam in the context of current discussions and debates in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The series solicits projects from scholars who wish to productively challenge their own disciplines and fields while also illuminating new areas of conceptual, archival, and ethnographic research. The series is open to projects without restriction to time periods, regions, or disciplines.

Islamic Humanities is an open access series in partnership with the University of California Press’s Luminos program. Free accessibility is a crucial aspect of the series in that it seeks global authorship and readership, attempting to match Islam’s worldwide presence. Books will undergo the standard review and board approval process, and receive standard editorial and marketing attention. Books in the series will be made available as free e-books as well as paperback editions.

Papers from the initiative’s first major conference held in April 2018 were published in the journal History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History in a theme issue entitled “Islamic Pasts: Histories, Concepts, Interventions” (December 2019).


Series Editor: Shahzad Bashir, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities, Brown University


For more information and a list of books currently in the series, please visit the Islamic Humanities page on the University of California Press website.