Ivan Kalmar

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 populist notions are generated and spread online. Currently his research focuses on populism 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 book, White But Not Quite: Central Europe’s Populist Revolt, is expected to be published in 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

2012   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, 2^nd. ed., Toronto: Quirk Press.

1994   Ivan Kalmar. The Trotskys, Freuds, and Woody Allens: Portrait of a Culture, Toronto: Penguin.

Selected Recent Book Chapters

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.

2016    “Orientalism.” Entry in the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd edition, ed. Richard C. Martin, Daniel M. Varisco, Ali Banuazizi, and Asma Afsaruddin. 2 vols. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.

Selected Recent Journal Contributions

“Anti-Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: The Case of Hungary and the ‘Soros Plot.’” Patterns of Prejudice, forthcoming 2020.

Guest editor (with Nitzan Shoshan), “Islamophobia in Germany: East/West,” a special issue of The Journal of Contemporary European Studies, forthcoming 2020. Co-wrote the Introduction with Nitzan Shoshan.

“’Just Like Everyone Else Only More So;’ Islamophobia and Populism in Eastern Germany and the East of the European Union.: The Journal of Contemporary European Studies, forthcoming 2020.

“The Jew and the Odalisque: Two Tropes Lost on the Way from Orientalism to Islamophobia.” ReOrient, forthcoming 2019.

Guest editor. “Islamophobia in the East of the European Union.” Patterns of Prejudice 52 (5), 2018. Wrote the introduction for the volume.

‘“The Battlefield Is in Brussels”: Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four in Its Global Context’. Patterns of Prejudice 52 (5), 2018, 406–19.