Journals
Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Edited by Samer Abboud

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Journal Information

ISSN: 0149-1784
eISSN: 2766-0176
Frequency: Quarterly

Description

The Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (JSAMES) is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal sponsored by Villanova University’s Center for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS) and published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

For several decades, the JSAMES has produced scholarship on the countries of South and Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, and the interconnections that bring the people and states of these areas together. In 2026, a renewed vision of JSAMES is launched, which expands the geographic, epistemological, and disciplinary boundaries of area studies such as South Asian or Middle Eastern Studies to bring these fields into shared dialogue.

The JSAMES will encourage interdisciplinary scholarship that is grounded in multi-sited and multi-lingual approaches to understanding the world. Such commitments will allow us to foster scholarship that complicates and challenges various binaries present in the study of these regions, such as littoral/inland, urban/rural, maritime/terrestrial, and religious/secular, in favor of scholarship that focuses on how these are co-constituted and how other spaces of contact and encounter emerge from within the macro-region. Taking the South Asian and Middle Eastern macro-region as the starting point for thinking through the world encourages authors to think across geographies and languages and to account for the various routes, exchanges, flows, and networks that shape lifeworlds in this vast region and beyond, including in the diaspora. The JSAMES will highlight how the macro-regional scale creates new meanings around politics, identity, and belonging that shape the subjectivities of individuals and collectives.

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Types of Articles

The JSAMES is committed to publishing a range of scholarly and creative writing that brings scholars, creatives, and practitioners into shared conversations. We welcome a range of contributions and are especially keen on publishing creative, cutting-edge work in the al-Maydan section of the journal. Research article contributors are welcome to submit their essays at any time without having contacted the editor or managing editor. They are certainly welcome to do so if they have any questions or would like pre-submission feedback. Contributors to any of the other sections of the journal should contact the editor or managing editor before submitting.

We are deeply committed to publishing writing from early career and Global South scholars and have created several opportunities for mentorship and pre-submission feedback from the editor and editorial board.

Research articles Original research articles or theoretical contributions that advance the journal’s vision.	7,000-9,000 words, inclusive of notes and bibliography	Double blind peer-reviewed
Forum Essays Original research articles published as part of a special ‘Research Forum’.)	Original research articles published as part of a special ‘Research Forum’.	Double blind peer-reviewed, by invitation only
al-Maydan Creative or non-scholarly contributions, such as research notes, photo essays, interviews, film reviews, source/collections analysis, exhibition reviews, profiles, reprints (with appropriate permissions), retrospective essays.	No more than 2,500 words	Editor reviewed; by invitation only. Please fill this form to demonstrate your interest or contact managing editor directly to pitch ideas.
Book Reviews Critical engagements with texts in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.	1,000-1,500 words	Editor reviewed; by invitation only. Please fill this form to demonstrate your interest or contact managing editor directly to pitch ideas.

Submission Guidelines

All submissions must include an abstract (250 words), no more than 5 keywords, and contact details. Articles can be submitted in .doc or .docx formats.

All manuscripts must be submitted via Scholastica:

The journal aims to attract a global, interdisciplinary audience. All contributions should demonstrate engagement with regional contexts and expertise through fieldwork, archives, language competence, and/or citation of literature in local languages or from scholars based in the region. We encourage authors to consider how certain forms of knowledge from within the region have been marginalized or excluded from the structures of knowledge production about South Asia and the Middle East and to think expansively about what materials, sources, languages, and texts they draw on in their scholarship. Please be sure to consult guidelines such as the Research Ethics in the Middle East and North Africa (REMENA). All articles published by scholars based in Global South institutions will be made Open Access (OA) for JSAMES readers.

All submissions should be original and not considered for publication in another outlet. Exceptions will be made for reprints of articles or essays. All use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) must be disclosed when articles are submitted. Any use of GAI for submitted text cannot be considered for peer review. Similarly, peer reviewers are requested not to use GAI for any part of their reviews.

Submissions should clearly state any funding sources, conflicts of interest, and institutional review board (ethics board) approvals.

Style

The JSAMES uses the 18^th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. For specific examples, visit our detailed Style Guidelines.

In formatting papers for submission, follow a notes and bibliography system citing sources in numbered endnotes. Use Times New Roman font in size 12. Use double-line spacing throughout the entire file, including notes and works cited listed. Keep margins at least 2.5 cm (1 inch) and all the pages numbered. Use bold for your article title, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns. Indicate the abstract paragraph with a heading and by reducing the font size. If you choose to use headings and subheadings for your article, please number them hierarchically as 1, 1.1, 1.1.1.

All illustrations (figures) and tables included in submitted manuscripts should include a number, a title and a caption and should be included in the main body of the article. For images, only high-resolution quality (300 DPI or higher) will be accepted, captions should include a credit line including who made the image and/or where it is archived. Authors will be responsible for demonstrating that the Journal has copyright permission to print any images. Please submit images in .jpeg or .tiff formats.

Quoted material of more than a paragraph (five lines or more in length) is best set off as a block quotation. A multi paragraph block quotation should generally reflect the paragraph breaks of the original, with one notable exception: The first quoted paragraph should begin flush left, even if the original text has a first-line paragraph indent. Subsequent paragraphs in the quotation should be indicated either by first-line paragraph indents or (less desirably) by extra line space between the paragraphs.

We accept the use of American English only. Accents and any other special characters must be in place throughout the manuscript, especially when containing language other than English. For transliterated Arabic text, follow systems set out by the ALA-LC Romanization Tables or the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and stick to it with as few exceptions as possible.

Resources for Authors

The Center for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS) is committed to actively fostering a scholarly community centered around the Journal. To this end, each academic year the CAIS will sponsor: (a) a Fall and Spring workshop to produce a research forum section of the journal, and, (b) a Fall and Spring workshop for advanced doctoral or early career scholars. Attendees of such workshops will benefit from structured feedback and the support of at least one editorial board member who will support them throughout the submission and review process. The CAIS also holds regular public events throughout the academic year to highlight the scholarship of the JSAMES editorial board and journal contributors. Finally, the CAIS co-sponsors external workshops to support contributions from scholars based in Global South institutions.

Please contact the managing editor Dina Baslan (dina.baslan@villanova.edu) if you are interested in participating in any of these opportunities.

Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Journal Information

Description