I am Assistant Professor of German Studies at the University of British Columbia. Prior to my appointment at UBC, I served as Assistant Professor of German and Coordinator of the German Program at Sam Houston State University. I received my Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures and Film & Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis (2015) and hold a B.A. (2007) and M.A. (2009) in German Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

I specialize in late-18th- to 21st-century German media and cultural history. My research focuses on 19th-century literature, film and media cultures, and queer studies. This work variously engages scholarship in affect, narrative, and queer theory. I am also invested in critical approaches to German studies as vital modes of humanities and language study advocacy. You can find an updated list of publications here. 

I believe in scholarly collectives! To this end, I have co-founded several research and advocacy networks. In 2016, I co-founded and am currently steering committee member of the international scholarly collective “Diversity, Decolonization, and the German Curriculum” (DDGC). Since the 2020 conference, "The Pasts and Futures of Queer German Studies," which I co-organized with Kyle Frackman (UBC), I've been part of an unofficial network devised to advance queer and trans German studies. Finally, in 2021, I co-founded the CES Cinema Studies Network, which seeks to highlight the work of scholars and students with interest in Central, Eastern, and Southern European cinema cultures. 

I serve on the editorial boards of Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, Feminist German Studies, and the Women, Gender and Sexuality in German Literature and Culture series. My work has been funded by Fulbright, the DAAD, SSHRC, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. 

My personal background: I was born into a Muslim family in the former Yugoslavia. My family fled the Bosnian war. We were refugees in Germany before moving to the USA—a move "inspired" by German residency visa restrictions. I am a queer scholar. 

Current Projects
  • a book examining the influence of fluctuating literary markets on authorial agency and narrative form provisionally titled Fragile Poetics: Industrial Print, Precarity, and Literary Form.
  • a book of personal essays provisionally titled Tetka Theory: A Queer Life in the Bosnian Diaspora.
  • a book on queer media engagement theory grounded in occult practices around 1900.
  • a companion to queer and trans German studies (part of a book series in development).
  • articles or book chapters on early stardom and ethnic difference, pedagogies of unwellness in German studies, palmistry and early cinema fandom, queer film aesthetics.
  • a workshop on the work of Lauren Berlant, a workshop on Courasche, and a symposium on the recent film adaptation All Quiet on the Western Front​.
  • an undergraduate journal in German studies: Augenblick. 

You can find me on twitter @ervinmalakaj. ​