Bryan’s early publications were influential accounts of antisemitism as a form of Semitic discourse which saturated mainstream culture in Europe and America. See, for example, Constructions of ‘the Jew’ in English Literature and Society: Racial Representations 1875-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1993); Between ‘Race’ and Culture: Representations of ‘the Jew’ in English and American Literature (Stanford University Press, 1996); Modernity, Culture and ‘the Jew’ (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998); and, with Nadia Valman, The Image of ‘the Jew’ in European Liberal Culture (London, Vallentine Mitchell, 2004).
His recent work connects the history of antisemitism with colonialism and anti-black racism in, for example, Diasporas of the Mind: Jewish/Postcolonial Writing and the Nightmare of History (Yale University Press, 2014); and Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is currently working on Testimonies: Slavery, Camps, Refugees for Oxford University Press.