Sunaina Maira’s teaching and research interests focus on youth, popular culture, transnationalism, South Asian immigrant communities, and U.S. empire.  She did her graduate and undergraduate education at Harvard University. Maira is the author of Desis in the House: Indian American Youth Culture in New York City. She is co-editor of Youthscapes: The Popular, the National, the Global and Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America, which won the American Book Award in 1997.  Her current book project is on South Asian Muslim immigrant youth and issues of citizenship and empire after 9/11, based on research funded by the Russell Sage Foundation.  She has worked with various civil and immigrant rights groups in New England as well as in the Bay Area.