MESAAS is the host department for the journal Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (non-Columbia link). In 2012 Duke University Press appointed Timothy Mitchell and Anupama Rao as Senior Editors. The current Senior Editors of the journal are Marwa ElShakry and Anupama Rao.

CSSAAME brings region and area studies into conversation with a rethinking of theory and the disciplines. The journal attends to the specificity of non-Western social, political, and intellectual formations as these challenge the norms and assumptions of scholarly paradigms generated in the north Atlantic.

The editorial board of the journal includes MESAAS members: Partha Chatterjee, Mamadou Diouf and Elleni Centime Zeleke. A number of other Columbia faculty serve as members of the editorial board or as contributing editors

Graduate students in MESAAS and other Columbia Departments serve as editorial assistants for the journal. They also produce an online journal, Borderlines , in association to CSSAAME.