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Pelle Valentin Olsen

Position

Associate Professor, Associate Professor

Affiliation

Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion

E-mail: pelle.olsen@uib.no
Phone number: +47 55582234
Visitor address: Øysteins gate 3
5007 Bergen
Postal address: P.O. Box 7805

NO-5020 Bergen

Norway

Pelle Valentin Olsen

Position

Associate Professor, Associate Professor

Affiliation

Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion

Research groups

Short info

I am a cultural, social, and transnational historian of the modern Middle East. My research and teaching focus on the history of leisure, labor, gender, sexuality, popular culture, cultural production, cinema, Middle Eastern Jewish history, and sci-fi and fantasy novel set in the Islamicate world.

Research

In my research, I focus specifically on Iraq, but my work simultaneously explores transregional and transnational connections, highlighting everyday perspectives and voices often left out by traditional political and state-centred histories. I received my PhD with honors from the University of Chicago in 2020. After finishing my PhD, I was a postdoctoral fellow in Global Studies at Roskilde University in Denmark, where I worked on the ‘Entangled Histories of Palestine and the Global New Left’ project. I came to Bergen via the University of Oslo, where I worked as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow on a project about the history of cinema in twentieth century Iraq.

I am currently preparing a book manuscript entitled Idle Days and Nights: Leisure, Time, and Modernity in Iraq. Taking leisure, fun, and pleasure seriously as historical categories of analysis, the book examines how leisure in twentieth century Iraq became one of several frontiers upon which the individual and citizen came into contact with, confronted, and interacted with new ideas about gender, sexuality, class, time, labour, and discipline. The book draws upon my dissertation wherein I traced the cultural, transregional, and transnational history of new urban practices of leisure in Baghdad. Idle Days and Nights draws on Arabic and Hebrew archival records, fiction and poetry, photography, popular song and music, periodicals, and published works held in institutions in Lebanon, Iraq, the UK, Italy, Israel, and the US. Examining the new institutions, practices, and distractions of leisure that took up increasing space and time in the life of Iraqis, the book explores uncharted aspects of both modern Iraqi and Middle Eastern history.

My second book project, Iraqi Cinema Beyond the Screen, explores the history of cinema in Iraq, a subject that has received virtually no scholarly attention. This project is a cultural, material, and transnational history of cinema, technology, labour, capital, and infrastructure in twentieth-century Iraq. The project interrogates the transnational circulation of cultural products and material objects, including films and technology, and explores how they came together at a particular historical moment with capital, performers, and people with technical skills to establish cinema as a form of leisure in Iraq. The project also maps the local Iraqi capitalist and entrepreneurial elites, who invested in film exhibition and production technology.

My work has appeared in edited volumes as well as in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Arab Studies Journal, Journal of Palestine Studies, Middle East Critique, Regards, Journal of Arabic Literature, Journal of Social History, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, and elsewhere.

Education

Ph.D. (2020), Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
MPhil Middle Eastern Studies (2014), University of Oxford, St. Antony’s College
BA Middle Eastern Studies (2012), University of Copenhagen

Grants & Awards

Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Annual Graduate Student Paper Prize (2018)
The Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARI) dissertation award for Best Dissertation on Modern/Medieval Iraq (2021)

Professional Memberships

Middle East Studies Association (MESA)

British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES)

American Historical Association (AHA)

Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS)

Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)

Outreach

At the University of Bergen, I regularly organize talks, seminars, guest lectures, and workshops on the modern and contemporary Middle East for students, staff, and the wider public. In addition, I frequently give lectures at local schools and civil society organizations. I also contribute to Norwegian media and a regular basis.

Teaching

I'm currently teaching the following classes:

HIM101: Overview of Middle East History

HIM105: Leisure, Pleasure, and Entertainment in the Middle East

I welcome BA, MA, and PhD students working on the Modern Middle East

Publications

Book review