Karen Leonard

Professor of Anthropology (PhD: U Wisconsin, 1969)
4283 Social Sciences Plaza B
(949) 824-7602
email: kbleonar at uci dot edu

Professor Leonard's newest book is a multisited ethnography, Locating Home: India's Hyderabadis Abroad, published by Stanford University Press in 2007. This book focuses on the diaspora from Hyderabad, India, to Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the United States, and the Gulf states of the Middle East.

In 2003, Professor Leonard published Muslims in the United States: the State of Research (Russell Sage Foundation), a book that has brought her many speaking engagements and consultations. She has been involved with the Social Science Research Council, participating in workshops and planning sessions on research on Muslims and Islam in the United States and Europe. She spoke in the fall of 2003 on American Muslim politics in Hyderabad, India, several times, and she was the keynote speaker (on the same topic) in the spring of 2004 at Harvard University's annual Young Muslims conference. She spoke in the fall of 2004 at the Religious Newswriters Association in Washington, DC, and at a Stanford conference on Understandings of Islam in France and the United States.

In the summer of 2005, Leonard gave three major conference papers abroad. In Paris, France, she spoke on migration and secularism, in Bellagio, Italy as a participant in a five day workshop on expatriates in the Gulf she spoke about political and cultural differences between Kuwait and the UAE, and in Ifrane, Morocco, at the World History Association, she spoke about the place of Africa in African American Islam. Leonards conference talks in the fall of 2005 included "Hyderabadis Abroad: Locating Home," South Asia Conference, University of Wisconsin; "South Asian Muslims in the US: New Contributions to the Mix," for SSRC/Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism workshop at the University of Southern California, "Religion and Society in Comparative Perspective: Punjabis and Hyderabadis "Translated" in the US," for the Cultural Translations: Punjabi Culture conference, UCB; "Indians and Pakistanis in Uneasy Contact in the Gulf: the Power of States," American Anthropological Association, Wash. DC.

Leonard reviews work on the history and culture of India, especially the former Hyderabad State, and on Asian American and Muslim American history and culture. She is Co-Director of the Center for Asian Studies at UCI for 2004-2007.

Selected Recent Publications

forthcoming: "Muslims in the West: the Americas,"
The New Cambridge History of Islam vol. 6, ed. Robert Hefner, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2007 "Immigrants from India,"
Harvard Encyclopedia of the New Americans, eds. Mary Waters and Reed Ueda (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).

2006 "Finding Places in the Nation: Immigrant and Indigenous Muslims in America,"
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, ed., Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants (University of Rutgers Press).

2006 "Women, Gender, and Muslim Diasporas: North America,"
Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Amsterdam: Brill).

2006 "South Asian Religions in the US: New Contexts and Configurations,"
in eds. Gita Rajan and Shailja Sharma, New Cosmopolitanisms: South Asians in the United States at the Turn of the 21st Century (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press).

2005 "South Asians in the Indian Ocean World: Language, Policing, and Gender Practices in Kuwait and the UAE,"
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25:3 (November 2005).

2005 "American Muslims and Authority: Competing Discourses in a non-Muslim State,
Journal of American Ethnic History 25:1 (fall 2005).

2005 Ed. Karen Isaksen Leonard, "Young American Muslims: Multiple Identities,"
Muslim World, Oct. 2005.

2005 Ed. Karen Isaksen Leonard, co-editors Alex Stepick, Manuel Vasquez, and Jennifer Holdaway, Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press).

2005 "Indo-Muslim Music, Poetry, and Dance in America"
(with Lorraine Sakata), Amerasia Journal 31:1 81-102.

2004 "American Muslims: Race, Religion, and Nation,"
ISIM Newsletter (International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World):14 (April, 2004), pp. 16-17.

2004 "The White Mughals: a review of William Dalrymple's Work,"
Deccan Studies 2:2 (July-December 2004), pp. 86-92.