Karl Kaser
Karl Kaser has been Professor for Southeast European History and Anthropology/Institute of History since 1996 and affiliated to the Institute as project collaborator, project leader, and assistant professor since 1980 (habilitation 1986). He is vice chairperson of the curricula committee for History, vice speaker of the doctoral program Visual Cultures, deputy head of the Institute of History, vice speaker of the University’s Field of Excellence ‘Dimensions of Europeanization’, and head of Southeast European History and Anthropology.
Curriculum Vitae – Prof. Dr. Karl Kaser
Born in 1954, he enrolled at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz with a major in history and minor in Slavic Languages and Literature in 1974, completing his studies with a doctorate in Southeast European History in 1980. His habilitation thesis in the field of Southeast European History, approved in 1986, was titled “Free Peasant and Soldier, the Militarization of the Agrarian Society on the Croatian-Slavonian Military Border, 1535-1881”. Since 1980 involved in research and teaching of Southeast European History at the University of Graz, he was appointed Adjunct Assistant Professor for Southeast European history at University of Graz in 1988 and in 1996 as Full Professor for Southeast European History and Anthropology at University of Graz – a position he has held until now.
Among various academic appreciations, he is honorary professor of University of Shkodra/Albania and honorary member of the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is member of various editorial boards, such as Glasnik Etnografskog Instituta SANU (Serbia), Istorijski zapisi (Serbia), Ekologija i Ekonomija (Croatia), Dubrovački anali (Croatia) and Bălgarska etnologija (Bulgaria).
Since 1983, he has chaired more than thirty national and international third-party funded research projects. Most of them were related to the history of family and gender relations in the Balkans and to the history of visual cultures in the Balkans. Among his current projects is the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project ‘Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures in the Humanities: Europe and the Black Sea Region, late 18th – 21st Centuries’ the consortium of which consists of twelve countries and which is funded with a total of 1.7 million euro.
Areas of Research and Teaching:
Research foci are the history of family, kinship and gender relations in Eurasia Minor and visual cultures of Southeast Europe in historical perspective. Teaching comprises the whole history of the Balkans and the Near East with special foci on family history as well as photography and film as historical sources.
Current Research:
“Visual Representations of Femininities and Masculinities: The Balkans and South Caucasia in the Digital Age”
The project investigates the increasing polarization of the visual representation of gender roles, of femininities and masculinities in the region with one tendency towards a ‘pornified’ or ‘porno-chic culture’ and another trend towards a ‘veiling culture’ since approx. 1990. In both cultures, the construction of femininities is more exposed to this polarization than masculinities.
(Recent) Publications:
1) Kaser, Karl: Hollywood auf dem Balkan. Die visuelle Moderne an der europäischen Peripherie (1900-1970). Vienna-Cologne-Weimar: Böhlau 2018.
2) Kaser, Karl: Andere Blicke. Religion und visuelle Kulturen auf dem Balkan und im Nahen Osten. Vienna-Cologne-Weimar: Böhlau 2013.
3) Kaser, Karl: The Balkans And The Near East. Introduction To A Shared History. Vienna-Berlin: Lit 2011.
