Ali A. Olomi
Assistant Professor of History
Biography
In his teaching, he combine research-based critical pedagogy with digital technologies.
Education
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
Accomplishments
Zarrinkelk Family Fellowship
2019
Humanities Commons Research Grant
2017 - 2018
Faculty Summer Research Grant, PSU
2021
Affiliations
- American Historical Association : Member
- Middle East Studies Association : Member
- American Academy of Religion : Member
- Association for Iranian Studies : Member
Languages
- Arabic
- Persian
- Latin
- Greek
Media Appearances
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
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
