
Biography
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.
Research
Selected Research
- Gunn, Olivia Noble. “Knausgård’s Scandalous ‘Labia’: Shame, Re-Enchantment, and the Pursuit of a More Imaginative Sex Education.” Scandinavian Studies, vol. 96, no. 3, 2024, pp. 92–116.
- Olivia Noble Gunn. “Siss/Unn/ingen: The Queer Revenant in Is-slottet.” Edda, vol. 110, no. 2, 2023, pp. 90–102, https://doi.org/10.18261/edda.110.2.3.
- Gunn, Olivia N. “Leaving the Theatre of Suffering: Two Endings—and a Color-Conscious Future?—for Hedda Gabler.” Theatre Journal (Washington, D.C.), vol. 73, no. 2, 2021, pp. 189–207.
- Gunn, Olivia Noble. “Growing Up: Knausgård on Proust, Boyishness, and (Straight) Time.” Scandinavian Studies, vol. 92, no. 3, 2020, pp. 325–347.
- Gunn, Olivia Noble. Empty Nurseries, Queer Occupants: Reproduction and the Future in Ibsen's Late Plays. Routledge, 2020.
- “Baby Factory: Romance and Reproduction in Norway’s First Sound Film.” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 6.3 (Fall 2016)
- “Other Mothers and the Limits of Bohemia in Alberte og friheten and Bare Alberte.” Scandinavian Studies 88:4 (Winter 2016)