R. Charles Weller

R. Charles Weller, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History (Career), Washington State University, USA, and Senior Research Fellow, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan. He specializes in the historiography of religious, national and civilizational identity and relations between the West and Islam as well as broader Asian world. His work focuses on the intersection of various Jewish, Christian, Muslim, indigenous and secular traditions in America and the broader the West in relation to the Middle East as well as Central and South Asia. This involves questions of how religious-cultural beliefs and practices (in relation to politics, human and civil rights, gender and economy) impact historical identity formation and resulting interrelations among religious, cultural, ethnic, national and civilizational groups. He situates all his work within broader transnational and world historical contexts. (See: https://www.rcweller.com/) (*See disclaimer)

Dr. Weller resided for eight total years in Kazakhstan (1995-99 and 2002-6), completing his Ph.D. in the Kazakh language under two nationally-recognized Kazakh scholars at al-Farabi Kazakh National University. Before coming to WSU, he was a visiting fellow at Yale University (2010-11). He has also held appointments as a non-residential visiting researcher at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (2014-2019) and Affiliate Faculty of History (Research) at George Mason University (2021-22). He was recently appointed a 2026-27 WSU Foley Institute-sponsored lecturer for Humanities Washington Speakers’ Bureau (https://www.humanities.org/speaker/r-charles-weller/).

Among works in English and Kazakh, Dr. Weller has authored several monographs, including a three-volume study on Moses, Muhammad and Their Laws in American National History and Identity (2024-26) as well as a study on ‘Pre-Islamic Survivals’ in Muslim Central Asia: Tsarist, Soviet and Post-Soviet Ethnography in World Historical Perspective (2023). He is editor of 21st-Century Narratives of World History: Global and Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2017) and co-editor with Anver Emon of Reason, Revelation and Law in Islamic and Western Theory and History (2021) (all with Palgrave Macmillan).

His teaching includes World History, Roots of Contemporary Issues, Medicine, Science & Technology in World History, Middle Eastern & Islamic history, Western Civilization, History of Christian-Muslim/Western-Islamic Relations, Religious-Cultural Encounter along the Silk Road, various independent (499) studies on world religious and Western-Islamic history, undergraduate and graduate-doctoral seminars at Kazakh Nat’l University on Central Asian religious history & identity, academic panels in India, and more. He served as co-instructor and coordinator for the Seminar in Asian Studies at WSU (2014). He has also served as ‘foreign advisor’ for a number of Kazakh doctoral students doing religious-cultural history & identity in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, hosting them as international visiting scholars at Washington State University. Dr. Weller has received two ‘Excellence in Teaching’ awards, a Learning Communities Excellence Award, a Critical Literacies Achievement and Success Program (CLASP) Faculty Award, and an Award for Promoting Tolerance, Diversity & Inclusiveness.

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