Ali A. Olomi
Assistant Professor of History | Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
Biography
Dr. Ali A Olomi is a historian of the Middle East and Islam researching, writing, and publishing on medieval and modern Muslim thought. He studies how Muslims imagined the “Islamic world” at the intersection of religion, science, and empire. He works on how Muslims in the premodern and modern world deployed the concept of homeland to etch the borders of empire, construct collective identity, and imagine the other. Dr. Olomi's research examines the Muslim imagination of the monstrous through the djinn/jinn, the early history of astronomy and its role in empire-building, and Islamic apocalypticism and cosmology. He has an interest in the deep roots of nationalism, the histories of science and rationality, Islamism, gender and sexuality, and the tension between global religious community and local identity. He has additional research and teaching interests in world history, critical theory, the global south, historiography, folklore, and mysticism.
In his teaching, he combine research-based critical pedagogy with digital technologies.
Education (3)
University of California, Irvine: Ph.D., History 2019
University of California, Irvine: M.A., History 2014
University of California, Los Angeles: B.A., History 2011
Areas of Expertise (10)
Middle East
Islam
Middle East Comparative Politics
History of Science
Religious Nationalism
History of Imperialism and Colonialism
Gender and Sexuality
Critical Theory
World History
Global History
Accomplishments (3)
Zarrinkelk Family Fellowship
2019
Humanities Commons Research Grant
2017 - 2018
Faculty Summer Research Grant, PSU
2021
Affiliations (4)
- American Historical Association : Member
- Middle East Studies Association : Member
- American Academy of Religion : Member
- Association for Iranian Studies : Member
Languages (4)
- Arabic
- Persian
- Latin
- Greek
Media Appearances (8)
New Assassin’s Creed video game brings Baghdad’s Golden Age back to life
Al Jazeera
2023-10-04
“This is where storytelling, creativity, can become immersive,” said Olomi. “When it draws on history or uses history as inspiration.”
“White Person in Foreign Peril”—The Movie Trope That Needs to End
MotherJones
2022-10-24
“Culture is rarely neutral, it often plays a role in empire building,” Olomi said.
Jinns and glass palaces: how Saudi’s dystopian desert city borders on the occult
Middle East Monitor
2022-09-06
According to Professor Ali A Olomi, a historian and scholar of the Middle East and Islam at Loyola Marymount University, some jinns choose to live among humans while others live in a hidden realm alongside ours
Afghan girls, faraway relatives worry over dreams disrupted
AP News
2021-11-04
The Taliban is “taking their personal, unique interpretation of Islamic law and fusing it with their cultural understanding of women’s rights and women’s access to the public sphere,” says Ali A. Olomi, an assistant professor of Islamic and Middle East history at Penn State University, Abington, stressing that Islam strongly encourages education.
Origins of the Taliban and what their history tells us about takeover of Afghanistan – podcast
The Conversation
2021-08-26
For Ali Olomi, those people surprised by the Taliban’s quick takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, were only surprised because they “don’t know the history”. Olomi, assistant professor of history at Penn State Abington in the US, says a failure to understand the past 40 years of Afghan history led to “massive blunders” after the US-led invasion in 2001. And it’s this history that can help explain what may happen next in Afghanistan.
The history of US intervention in Afghanistan, from the Cold War to 9/11
Vox
2021-08-21
I recently spoke with Ali A. Olomi, a historian of the Middle East and Islam at Penn State Abington, about the long, storied history of US meddling in Afghanistan and how it has shaped the country and people’s lives there. Olomi, who is the host of the podcast Head on History, discussed the US’s funding of some factions of the mujahedeen, or Afghan guerrilla fighters, during the 1970s and ’80s; America’s rolling reasoning for its involvement in Afghanistan post-2001; and whether the US, even without soldiers present, is really gone.
Afghans chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ in defiant protests against Taliban
Al Jazeera
2021-08-03
Ali A Olomi, an Afghan-American professor of the History of the Middle East and Islam, said the fact that the people chose “Allahu Akbar” as their cry of defiance to the Taliban is especially profound. “It is a declaration that God, no matter the circumstances whether in victory, or defeat, is greater than any and all. It is a cry of defiance when facing an overwhelming oppressor, or experiencing the vicissitudes of persecution,” he told Al Jazeera.
Saturn and Jupiter are Just Showing Off
The Atlantic
2020-12-21
“From time immemorial, people have looked to the stars to help them explain the chaos of their present and the uncertainty of their future,” Ali A. Olomi, a history professor at Penn State who has studied how early observers thought about planetary conjunctions, told me.”
Courses (3)
History 1500
The Modern Middle East: The State, Citizen, and Society
History 1501
Islamic Societies: Religion and Empire
History 4530
3 Religions, 1 City: Jerusalem Through the Ages
