Olivia Noble Gunn is Associate Professor and the Sverre Arestad Endowed Chair in Norwegian Studies in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interests include Norwegian literature and culture after 1880, comparative literature, performance studies, feminism, critical race theory, and queer theory. She is motivated by big questions about innocence, propriety and the limits of thinking and living. Olivia has published research on the dramas of Henrik Ibsen, figures of the child, and constructions of family, class, gender, and racialization in Norwegian literature and film. Her teaching interests range from the modernist Norwegian novel to representations of sexuality in the Nordic countries. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Olivia enjoys maintaining connections with Scandinavian American and other communities on the west coast through public facing talks.