Rannfrid Irene Thelle
Rannfrid Thelle presents Babylon as it has been passed down through Western culture: through the Bible, classical texts, travel accounts, and in art. It details the discovery of the remains unearthed by archaeologists in 1899-1917, focusing on the encounter between the received Babylon and the excavated Babylon. Thelle’s unique multi-disciplinary approach combines expertise in biblical studies and Assyriology with perspectives on history, art history, reception studies and contemporary issues.
Subjects: Archaeology, Art & Visual Culture, History, Literature, Museum and Heritage Studies , Religion
Biography
Rannfrid Thelle is Assistant Professor of Religion in the Department of Women’s Studies and Religion at Wichita State University. She earned her PhD in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at the University of Oslo, in her native Norway, where she taught biblical studies for several years.Education
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Dr. art. (Ph.D.), University of Oslo, 1999
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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At WSU, Rannfrid Thelle teaches New Testament, Old Testament, and courses such as Women and the Bible, Violence and the Bible, Archaeology and the Bible, the Bible and the Ancient Near East, and occasionally also Biblical Hebrew.
Dr. Thelle’s book Discovering Babylon was published with Routledge in 2018. Her other books include, Ask God: Divine Consultation in the Literature of the Hebrew Bible (Peter Lang, 2002) and Approaches to the Chosen Place: Accessing a Biblical Concept (Continuum, 2012), as well as the edited volume New Perspectives on Old Testament Prophecy and History (Brill, 2015). Dr. Thelle has published over a dozen journal articles on biblical prophecy, holy war, and history of research.
For a future project, Thelle is working on issues of heritage management and historiography in politically contested places.
Personal Interests
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Having grown up in Japan, Rannfrid enjoys traveling, and has taken numerous groups on study tours to countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, as well as Europe and South East Asia. Dr. Thelle is also a frequent speaker at various community venues for adult education in Wichita.
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Published: Nov 23, 2018
This talk was organized by the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona, and was a part of the Sally and Ralph Duchin Campus Lecture series . Other sponsoring organizations were the School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Department of History, School of Anthropology, and Religious Studies & Classics.