Manuela Ceballos studies Islamic and Christian mystical literature in the medieval and early modern Western Mediterranean. She completed her dissertation at Emory University in 2016. She has published articles on mysticism and violence, the historiographical concept of convivencia (the coexistence of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Islamic Spain), and has a forthcoming article on the hagiographical account of a sixteenth-century Muslim saint of Christian and Jewish ancestry. She regularly teaches “Introduction to the Study of Islam,” and other courses that focus on literature, history, and culture in the Muslim West. Before focusing on the study of Islam, Ceballos earned a BA in French and Comparative Literature and an MA in French from Bryn Mawr College.

Ceballos is the author of Between Dung and Blood: Purity, Sainthood, and Power in the Early Modern Western Mediterranean (The University of California Press, 2025). This book project was supported by an NEH fellowship in 2023. Ceballos is also the translator of two books by Moroccan author Abdelfattah Kilito: La lengua de Adán y otros relatos (Sílaba, 2023), and Nuestra lengua extranjera: Ensayos desde el balcón (UNAM, 2026), and co-editor of Navigating Language in the Early Islamic World (Brepols, 2024).