Karen B. Leonard
Professor, Anthropology
School of Social Sciences
School of Social Sciences
Asian American Studies
School of Humanities
School of Humanities
PH.D., University of Wisconsin, 1969
University of California, Irvine
4283 Social Sciences Plaza B
Mail Code: 5100
Irvine, CA 92697
4283 Social Sciences Plaza B
Mail Code: 5100
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Social history of India, caste, ethnicity and gender, Asian-Americans in the United States
Research Abstract
Dr. Leonard's interests are interdisciplinary and comparative, ranging from the socio-economic history and anthropology of South Asia to Asian American Studies. Leonard's book, Making Ethnic Choices: California's Punjabi Mexican Americans, looks at the Punjabi immigrants who came to rural California in the early twentieth century and particularly at the families they formed with Hispanic women to explore transformations of ethnic identity in the United States. Her book, South Asian Americans, looks at Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Afghan, and Nepalese immigrants. Currently, Leonard is working on personal and national identities in the diaspora of Hyderabadi emigrants from India after 1948, a cross-national comparative project being carried out in Hyderabad, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia, and the Gulf States of the Middle East. She has also completed a bibliographic essay on Muslims in the U.S., her most recent book, and is working on American Muslims and their place in America's changing religious landscape.
Publications
Locating Home: India's Hyderabadis Abroad (Stanford University Press, 2007).
Social History of an Indian Caste: the Kayasths of Hyderabad. lst ed. U of California Press, Berkeley, 1978; 2nd ed. Orient Longman, Hyderabad, India, 1993.
Making Ethnic Choices: California's Punjabi-Mexican-Americans. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.
The South Asian Americans. Greenwood Press, New Americans series, Westport, Conn., 1997.
Muslims in the United States: The State of Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003
Other Experience
Co-Director,
Center for Asian Studies, 2004—2007
Center for Asian Studies, 2004—2007
Research Centers
Center for Asian Studies
Link to this profile
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=2599
https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=2599
Last updated
10/08/2006
10/08/2006