Rachel Schine is an assistant professor of Arabic and religious studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her work focuses on histories of representation in premodern Arabic literatures, with attention to dynamics of race and racialization, gender, class, and kinship. Her current book project analyzes the roles of Black Muslim protagonists in constructions of religio-political community in the popular sīras, a medieval corpus of legendary conquest literature that traveled across several centuries and regions. She has published on related topics in, among others, the Journal of Arabic Literature and al-'Uṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists.