Dr. Malakaj specializes in late-18th- to 21st-century German media and cultural history. His research focuses on 19th-century literary cultures, film studies, queer studies, and humanities as well as language learning advocacy.

Dr. Malakaj’s first book, Anders als die Andern (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), concerns the aesthetics of mourning at the core of Richard Oswald’s infamous early queer melodrama. The monograph is part of Dr. Malakaj’s broader research arc concerning pre-1933 queer German cultural practice, which also includes a monograph in progress on early queer media theory and occult cultural practice tentatively titled Divinatory Cultural Techniques: Queer Media Engagement, 1900–1933.

Dr. Malakaj’s work on literary studies draws on queer theory, narrative theory, and book history in order to examine the influence of fluctuating literary markets on authorial agency and narrative form. Here, he recently completed a book manuscript provisionally titled Fragile Poetics: Precarity and Literary Form in Early Wilhelmine Germany (under review).

Following the publication of a personal essay on living with trauma, Dr. Malakaj began writing a book of essays provisionally titled, Tetka Theory: A Queer Life in the Bosnian Diaspora. The book theorizes tentative epistemologies as vital resource for navigating life in the queer Bosnian diaspora. Once completed, the book will mark the starting point for a long-term research project on the aesthetic practices of the queer Balkan diaspora.

In 2016, Dr. Malakaj co-founded the international scholarly collective “Diversity, Decolonialization, and the German Curriculum” (DDGC) and is member of its steering committee. Together with Regine Criser (University of North Carolina, Asheville) he co-edited the volume Diversity and Decolonization in German Studies (2020, Palgrave). Dr. Malakaj also serves as a co-editor of DDGC’s official blog and is part of a number of DDGC initiatives, including the DDGC Mutual Aid Network.

At UBC, Dr. Malakaj collaborates with students on initiatives to enhance UBC’s intellectual cultures for undergraduate German studies. In this regard, he helped develop Augenblick: A Journal for Undergraduate German Studies and the annual German Studies Undergraduate Research Showcase. The latter is a collaboration between the undergraduate German Studies programs at UBC, the University of Victoria, and the University of Washington.

Dr. Malakaj serves on the editorial boards for Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, Feminist German Studies, and the Women, Gender and Sexuality in German Literature and Culture series.

Book

Anders als die Andern Queer Film Classics Series (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023).

Edited Volumes & Special Issues of Scholarly Journals

“Refuge and Displacement,” co-edited with Beverly Weber, Special Issue of English Language Notes (ELN), 63.1 (2025).

“Queer Time and Contemporary German Cinema,” co-ed. with Kyle Frackman. Special Issue of The Germanic Review97.4 (2022).

“Rupture, Slowness, Untimeliness: Queer Time and History in German Studies,” co-ed. with Kyle Frackman. Special Issue of Monatshefte 114.3 (2022).

Slapstick: An Interdisciplinary Companion, co-ed. with Alena E. Lyons (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021).

Market Strategies and German Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century, co-edited with Vance Byrd, Interdisciplinary German Cultural Studies Series, ed. Irene Kacandes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020).

Diversity & Decolonization in German Studies, co-edited with Regine Criser (New York: Palgrave, 2020)

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

“Divinatory Intimacy: Marianne Raschig’s Palmistry Guide and the Democratization of Film Knowledge Production in Weimar Film Print Culture” Modernism/modernity (forthcoming)

“Burdened Solidarities Beyond the Impasse,” co-authored with Beverly Weber for English Language Notes 63.1 (2025): 1–10.

“Stretch Marks on the Soul: Reanimating Solidarity Work in the Face of Its Structural Suppression,” Diacritics 52.1 (2025): 106–19.

“Feeling Bad, Together: The Pedagogy of Unwellness in German Studies,” co-authored with Maggie Rosenau for Feminist German Studies 40.1 (2024): 15-29.

“Courasche and the Queer Life of Objects,” Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik vol. 152 (2024): 55–73.

“Queer Occultism,” Forum on Queer German Studies, The German Quarterly 97.2 (2024): 222–24.

“Queer Time and the Cinematic Pleasures of the locus amoenus in Free Fall” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 29.2 (2023): 237–260.

“Introduction: Queer Time and Contemporary German Cinema,” with Kyle Frackman, The Germanic

Review 97.4 (2022): 299–309.

“Untimeliness and the Balkan Queer Diaspora in Dennis Todorović’s Saša,” The Germanic Review 97.4 (2022): 340–358.

“Approaches to Queer Temporalities in German Studies,” with Kyle Frackman, Monatshefte 114.3 (2022). (forthcoming)

“DDGC and Misfit Archives,” with Regine Criser, Seminar 57.3 (2021): 295-302.

“A Comparative Analysis of Cultural Representations in Collegiate World Language Textbooks,” with  Baburhan Uzum, Bedrettin Yazan, Samar Zahrawi, and Siham Bouamer, Linguistics and Education 61 (2021).

“Announced but Not Enacted: Anti-Racist German Studies as Process,” with Andrea Dawn Bryant, Nichole M. Neuman, and David Gramling, Applied Linguistics (2019): 1–9.

“Advocating for Queer of Color Studies in German Graduate Programs,” with Priscilla Layne. Unterrichtspraxis/ Teaching German 52.2 (2019): 194-202.

“Queer Derailment and Pederast Adoration in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Michael (1924),” German Quarterly 92.3 (2019): 311-327.

“The Emotive Textualities of Wilhelm Jensen’s Karin von Schweden,” Neophilologus 102.1 (2018): 59-74.

“Richard Oswald, Magnus Hirschfeld, and the Possible Impossibility of Hygienic Melodrama,” Studies in European Cinema 14.3 (2017): 216-230.

“Teaching an Honors Seminar on #BlackLivesMatter in East Texas,” with Jeffery L. Littlejohn, Kimberly Bell, Patrick Lewis, and Julia May, Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council 18.2 (2017): 3-15.

Peer Reviewed Chapters

“On Debility in Helma Sanders-Brahms’s Die Berührte,” New German Cinema and its Global Contexts, eds. Marco Abel and Jaimey Fisher (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2024), 221-39..

“An Inventory of Feeling: Ferdinand Karsch and the Matter of Frustration in Early Sexological Writing,” Taking Stock: Media Inventories in the German Nineteenth Century, eds. Sean Franzel, Ilinca Iurascu, and Petra McGillen (Berlin: de Gruyter), 95-104.

“Bertha von Suttner’s Inventarium einer Seele and the Business of Inventorying Experience,” Taking Stock: Media Inventories in the German Nineteenth Century, eds. Sean Franzel, Ilinca Iurascu, and Petra McGillen (Berlin: de Gruyter), 267-74.

“Die Suche nach einer iranisch-deutschen Queer-of-Color Filmform in Faraz Shariats Futur Drei,” Text/Körper. Ästhetiken und Praktiken literarischer (Un-)Sichtbarkeit, eds. Vanessa Höving and Lena Wetenkamp (Freiburg: Rombach, 2024), 155-75.

“Aerial Aesthetics, Queer Intimacy, and the Politics of Repose in the Cinema of Nils Bökamp and Monika Treut,” At the End of Neoliberalism: The Aesthetics and Politics of Contemporary German Film, eds. Claudia Breger and Olivia Landry (Rochester: Camden House, 2024), 202-18.

“Resisting the Traps of Hegemony: Variation in Contemporary German Queer of Color Cinema,” with Priscilla Layne, Routledge Companion to European Cinema, ed. Gábor Gergely & Susan Hayward (New York: Routledge, 2022), 374-384.

“Introduction: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Slapstick,” “Introduction: History of Slapstick,” “Introduction: Instruments of Slapstick,” “Introduction: Narrative Structures of Slapstick,” “Introduction: Bodies of Slapstick,” “Introduction: Politics of Slapstick,” with Alena Lyons. Slapstick: An Interdisciplinary Companion, ed. Ervin Malakaj and Alena E. Lyons (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021).

“Lubitsch’s Queer Slapstick Aesthetics,” Slapstick: An Interdisciplinary Companion, ed. Ervin Malakaj and Alena E. Lyons (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021): 333-50.

“Diversity Programming, Student Outreach, and the Politics of Visible Inclusivity for Small German Programs,” Outreach Strategies and Innovative Teaching for Small German Programs, ed. Gabi Eichmanns and Melissa Etzler (New York: Routledge, 2020), 64-74.

“Alfred Rosenthal’s Rhetoric of Collaboration and Weimar Film Print Culture,” Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Film, ed. Barbara Hales and Valerie Weinstein (New York: Berghahn Books, 2020): 111–31.

“The State of Diversity and Decolonization in North American German Studies,” Transnational Education and German Studies, ed. Ben Nickl, Deane Blackler, and Stefan Popenici (New York: Springer, 2020): 85-101.

“Introduction: Diversity and Decolonization in German Studies,” with Regine Criser, Diversity & Decolonization in German Studies, ed. Regine Criser and Ervin Malakaj (New York: Palgrave, 2020): 1–22.

“Introduction: Market Strategies and German Literature in the Nineteenth Century,” with Vance Byrd, Market Strategies and German Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Vance Byrd and Ervin Malakaj (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020): 1-22.

“Carl Emil Franzos’s Deutsche Dichtung and the Politics of Painstaking Editorial Labor,” Market Strategies and German Literature in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Vance Byrd and Ervin Malakaj (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020): 171-193.

“Senescence and Der Stechlin,” Fontane in the Twenty-First Century, ed. John Lyon and Brian Tucker (Rochester: Camden House, 2019): 232-247.

“Cruel Optimism and Post-68 Nostalgia in Helma Sanders-Brahms’ Unter dem Pflaster ist der Strand,” Celluloid Revolt: German Screen Cultures and the Long 1968, ed. Christina Gerhardt and Marco Abel (Rochester: Camden House, 2019): 237-253.

Public-Facing Publications

“Between Cine-anthropology and Distraction: Revisiting Béla Balázs’s Visible Man at 100,” co-authored with Paul Dobryden, Senses of Cinema, Issue 111, November, 2024.

“Research and Teaching Dossier on Anders als die Andern,” with Shoshana Schwebel, WeimarCinema.org. September 20, 2024.

“Anders als die Andern,” New Books Network Podcast. December 11, 2023.

“Cozy Methodologies and Queer German Studies,” The New Fascism Syllabus. November 16, 2023.

“The Enduring Appeal of a Century-Old German Film about Queer Love,” The Conversation. September 27, 2023.

“It’s Hard to Love Your Literary Studies,” Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach | blog. April 28, 2022.

“What Can We Learn from Slapstick Comedy?,” with Alena E. Lyons, de Gruyter Conversations. April 26, 2022.

“Historical Injury and Multidirectional Solidarity in Times of Crisis,” The New Fascism Syllabus. March 6, 2022.

“The Long Century’s Long Shadow: Weimar Cinema and the Romantic Modern by Kenneth S. Calhoon,” EuropeNow Journal. Issue 45, 9 November, 2021.

“Glacial Innovation,” Re-Imagining the Discipline: German Studies, the Humanities, and the University. Proceedings for conference held at Cornell University’s Institute for German Cultural Studies, 2020.

“Peter Handke Nobel Prize controversy: Literature Can’t be Judged on Esthetics Alone,” The Conversation. 27 January, 2020.

Dr. Malakaj’s research has been funded (among others) by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Fulbright Commission. For his contribution to the advancement of international German studies, he was awarded the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize by the German Academic Exchange Service in the junior category.

Dr. Malakaj currently supervises postdoctoral, doctoral, MA, and undergraduate research projects in German studies and beyond. For his extensive commitment to mentoring has been recognized by the UBC CENES Outstanding Mentorship Award.

Postdoctoral Supervision

“Germany and the Trans Historical Imaginary: Affective Reimaginations of the Transgender Past,” Jonah Garde, Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (projected completion: 2026)

PhD Thesis Supervision

“Sankofa and Black German Autobiographical Nonfiction and Filmmaking,” Ajibola Fabusuyi, Co-Supervisor with David Gramling (projected completion: 2025)

“Negatives: Emmy Hennings’s Media of Longing,” Shoshana Schwebel, SSHRC & Killam Doctoral Fellowships, Co-Supervisor with Ilinca Iurascu (projected completion: 2026)

“Uneasy Afterlives: In Search of the Trans Ordinary,” John O’Hara (projected completion: 2027)