Louise Cainkar is a sociologist in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences at Marquette University. Her areas of expertise include Arab American studies, Muslim American studies, and immigrant communities, fields in which she has published extensively. Her recent award-winning book, Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience after 9/11 (2009, Russell Sage Foundation) draws upon analyses of national security policies and historic stereotyping to contextualize her extensive field research and ethnographic interviews with Arab and Muslim Americans after 9/11. In 2004 Cainkar won the prestigious Carnegie Scholar Award to study the reinvigoration of Islamic practices among second generation Muslim Americans. Since then she has won awards from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, the Arab American National Museum, The Council on American Islamic Relations-Chicago, and from Chicago's Mayor Daley on behalf of the Chicago Council on Human Relations. Cainkar has also conducted research in Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Palestine, and Yemen. She recently completed six months of research in Jordan, Yemen, and Palestine for a comparative study of second generation Arab Americans who are raised trans-nationally. Cainkar is on the executive board of the Association for Middle East Women's Studies and the editorial board of Middle East Report. She supports engaged public sociology by conducting research for non-profit organizations, and believes in socially engaged leadership. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of Chicago's Arab American Action Network and Project M, a new non-profit that seeks to promote Muslim American political participation.
