Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Sociocultural Anthropology
- Europe
Areas of Interest
Research Keywords: Populism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism, especially in East Central and Western Europe; representations of Jews and Muslims in western cultural history; race, nation, and religion
Research Region: Central and Western Europe
Biography
Ivan Kalmar’s research has addressed a wide range of topics ranging from Inuit language and the mythology of the computer, to the image of Muslims and Jews in western Christian cultural history. He continues to be keenly interested in how Islamophobic and illiberal notions are generated and spread online. Currently his research focuses on illiberalism in Europe, with a focus on relations between the post-communist members of the European Union and the rest (including between the East and the West in Germany). Prof. Kalmar has co-edited Orientalism and the Jews (University Press of New England, 2005) and published Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power (Routledge, 2012). His latest book is White But Not Quite: Central Europe’s Populist Revolt (University of Bristol Press, 2022). Prof. Kalmar’s articles appear as book chapters and journal articles in publications dealing with the topics of race and religion, Jews and Muslims, language and nationalism, and others. He has edited a special issue of Patterns of Prejudice on Islamophobia in the East of the European Union and, together with Nitzan Shoshan, a special issue of The Journal of Contemporary European Studies called Islamophobia in Germany: East/West. Currently he is co-editing a proposed special issue on race and racialization in the East of the European Union, with Aleksandra Lewicki.
Publications
Books
2022 Ivan Kalmar. White But Not Quite: Central Europe’s Illiberal Revolt. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
2014 Ivan Davidson Kalmar. Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power. London and New York: Routledge.
2005 Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, eds. Orientalism and the Jews. Hannover, NH: University Press of New England.
2003 Ivan Davidson Kalmar. Word, Culture, Image: Notes on Linguistic and Semiotic Anthropology, 2nd. ed., Toronto: Quirk Press.
1994 Ivan Kalmar. The Trotskys, Freuds, and Woody Allens: Portrait of a Culture, Toronto: Penguin.
Book Chapters
2020 “Orientalism” in Key Concepts in the Study of Antisemitism, ed. by S. Goldberg and K. Weiser. Palgrave.
2019 Ivan Kalmar. “Orientalism and the Bible.” Orientalism and Literature, ed. by Geoffrey P. Nash. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 133-48.
2017 Ivan Davidson Kalmar. “The Rise and Fall of the Semite: Jews, Arabs, and Muslims in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century,” in Mitchell Hart and Tony Michels, eds., The Cambridge History of Judaism (Cambridge, Engl.: Cambridge University Press). Volume 8: The Modern Period (c. 1815-2000).
2016 Ivan Kalmar and Tariq Ramadan, “Antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Routledge Handbook of Muslim-Jewish Relations, ed. by Yousef Meri. New York and London: Routledge.
2013 Ivan Kalmar, “The Israelite Temple of Florence: The Struggle for a Jewish Space and Style in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe” in Oskar Verkaaik, ed. Religious Architecture: The Anthropological Perspective. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
2013 Ivan Kalmar, “Race By Grace: Race and Religion, the Secular State, and the Construction of ‘Jew’ and ‘Arab,” in Efraim Sicher, Jews Color Race: Rethinking Jewish Identities. London: Berghahn Press, 482-509.
2005 Ivan Kalmar. “Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban: Orientalism, the Jews, and Christian Art,” in Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England), 3-31.
Articles
2020 Ivan Kalmar and Nitzan Shoshan, guest editors, Islamophobia in Germany: East and West (Special Issue), Journal of Contemporary European Studies 28 (1).
2020 Ivan Kalmar and Nitzan Shoshan, “Islamophobia in Germany: East and West. An Introduction.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 28 (1): 1-14.
2020 Ivan Kalmar, “The East is Just Like the West, Only More So: Islamophobia and Populism in Eastern Germany and the East of the European Union.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 28 (1): 15-29.
2020 Ivan Kalmar, “Islamophobia and Anti-Anti-Semitism: The Case of Hungary and the ‘Soros plot’.” Patterns of Prejudice 60 (1). 1-18.
2019 “The Jew and the Odalisque: Two Tropes Lost on the Way from Orientalism to Islamophobia.” ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies 4 (2), 181-96.
2018 Ivan Kalmar, Christopher Stevens, and Nicholas Worby, “Twitter, Gab, and Racism: The Case of the Soros Myth.” Proceedings, 8th Social Media and Society Conference, Copenhagen 2018.
2018 Ivan Kalmar, guest editor, Islamophobia in the East of the European Union (Special Issue), Patterns of Prejudice.
2018 Ivan Kalmar, “Islamophobia in the East of the European Union: An Introduction.” Patterns of Prejudice 52(5), 389–405.
2018 Ivan Kalmar, “Antisemitism and Islamophobia, Not Only in Eastern Europe.” Connections (Leipzig).
2018 Ivan Kalmar, “’The Battlefield Is in Brussels’: Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four in Its Global Context.” Patterns of Prejudice 52(5), 406–19.
2015 Ivan Kalmar. “Early Orientalism and the Jews Baroque Ethnography and Johann Jacob Schudts Jewish Memorabilia.” Frankfurt Jewish Studies Bulletin Vol. 40, pp. 63-76.