Prof. Danny Kaplan teaches in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and directs the Masculinity Studies track in the Gender Studies program at Bar Ilan University. He also co-directs the Bar Ilan Center for Cultural Sociology. 

Kaplan specializes in the study of emotions, with a focus on the politics of friendship and nationalism. In recent years he has explored patterns of “social club sociability” in a variety of institutions (Freemasonry, military commemoration rituals, music radio broadcasting, reality television, Facebook) and developed a research strategy for studying civic and national solidarity based on an analytic distinction between public intimacy and collective intimacy. Parts of this project appeared in his last book The Nation and the Promise of Friendship: Building Solidarity through Sociability  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

In addition, Kaplan is studying masculinity ideologies and cultural models of parenting. He was awarded an ISF grant to conduct a survey of involved fatherhood and new masculinity ideology.

Kaplan held visiting scholar positions at Columbia University and in the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, where he is a faculty fellow.

Research interests:

• civic and national solidarity
• politics of friendship
• media and popular culture
• social media
• military culture
• masculinity ideologies
• cultural models of fathering