EWIC is envisioned as a broad based, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, transhistorical encyclopedia, focusing specifically on women and Islamic cultures, but also including non-Muslim women in cultures where Islam has had a significant presence. Published by Brill (Leiden), EWIC is the first such encyclopedia. Six volumes (4,000,000 words) of EWIC are scheduled to be published. Volume I (Methodologies, Paradigms and Sources) was published in 2003 and Volume II (Family, Law and Politics) was published in 2005. Volume III (Family, Body, Sexuality and Health) will appear at the end of 2005. Volumes IV (Economics, Education, Mobility, and Space), V (Practices, Interpretations, and Representations) and VI (Supplement and Index) will appear by 2006.

News as of September 2006: The first volume of EWIC in the Arabic language is complete and is available for download! Please click here to access the download page for the PDF. (Caution: you must have Adobe Acrobat and the Simplified Arabic fonts installed to read this file.) Please be patient if the file takes a while to download. Due to the large size of the volume, this is a certainty even over a fast internet connection.

We are interested in inviting broad participation in the writing of Encyclopedia entries, including qualified graduate students. We are in the process of soliciting authors for EWIC entries and expanding and updating the EWIC author database. We are currently compiling the names, coordinates, and areas of research expertise of possible contributors. If your research is relevant to women and Islamic cultures and you are interested in being included in the author database, please fill out the contributor template. Those authors who have already filled out a contributor template, please feel free to fill out another template with any updates you would like us to have on record.

*Posted with permission from the photographers: Azza Basarudin, Yesim Arat, Noshaba Arif, Tarek Fatah, Elisabeth Braun, Lila Abu-Lughod.
**Photos from this site may not be reproduced or used without permission from the photographer.