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Thor Holt

Associate Professor - Centre for Ibsen Studies

Email thor.holt@ibsen.uio.no

Mobile phone +47 96676402

Room HW 231

Available hours Tuesday 1–3 pm

Username

Visiting address Niels Henrik Abels vei 36 Henrik Wergelands hus 0313 Oslo

Postal address Postboks 1166 Blindern 0317 Oslo

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Academic interests

Ibsen, Nordic Literature, Film History, Adaptation Studies, German Cultural History, Modern Disaster Discourses

My research is focused on the intersections between aesthetics and politics, between literature, film, and different sociopolitical contexts. On the one hand, it draws on literature-, film-, and adaptation theory, on the other hand, it employs literature-, film-, and theatre history, as well as social philosophy, critique of ideology, and disaster discourses.

Courses taught

IBS2210/4210 – Ibsen i praksis

IBS4001 – Theoretical, Methodological, and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Ibsen Studies

NOR2415 – Contemporary Scandinavian Film

Appointments and other projects

Teaching Coordinator at the Centre for Ibsen Studies (2024–)

Co-editor of Ibsen Studies (2019–)

Guest Editor of Vagant, no. 3–4, 2021 (special issue on Siegfried Kracauer)

International experience

Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley, CA (2021–22)

Guest Researcher, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin (2015–16)

Background

PhD in Ibsen Studies and Film, University of Oslo (2020)

MA in Comparative Literature, University of Copenhagen (2012)

Holt, Thor (2026). Ibsen and the Kammerspielfilm. WeimarCinema. 4(1). doi: https:/www.weimarcinema.org/essay/Holt. Full text in Research Archive
Rees, Ellen; D'Amico, Giuliano & Holt, Thor (2023). Ibsen in Performance. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 23(2), p. 250–267. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2023.2268353. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2023). Ibsen Studies and Adaptation. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 23(2), p. 230–249. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2023.2268352. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2022). Trauma, Aesthetic Treatment, and Intermediality: Das Haus der Lüge (1926). In Hanssen, Eirik Frisvold & Lund, Maria Fosheim (Ed.), Silent Ibsen. Transnational Film Adaptation in the 1910s and 1920s. National Library of Norway. ISSN 9788279655275. p. 189–221. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The silent era represents the height of Henrik Ibsen’s popularity as a source for film adaptations, and as a reference in debates on cinema. About thirty known silent film adaptations of Ibsen’s works were made in several countries. In this book, leading international Ibsen scholars and film historians examine the nine silent Ibsen films that are known to be extant, made in the period 1911-1926 in the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Italy. The films are placed in their specific film historical and industrial settings, as well as broader sociopolitical frameworks, and Ibsen’s various and shifting positions within these different national and cultural contexts. The book also includes a filmography of silent Ibsen film adaptations.
Rees, Ellen & Holt, Thor (2022). Entanglements of Adaptation, Allegory, and Reception: Jaws and An Enemy of the People. Journal of Aesthetics and Culture. 14(1). doi: 10.1080/20004214.2021.2022864. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
In this article the authors discuss Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) with Henrik Ibsen’s En Folkefiende (An Enemy of the People; 1882) as a test case for formulating a better theoretical understanding of adaptations that are neither “announced” nor “extended”; the analysis thus explores adaptation as a special form of intertextuality. The authors reference other cinematic engagements with the same play, including Hans Steinhoff’s Ein Volksfeind (1937), Detlef Sierck’s La Habanera (1937), George Schaefer’s An Enemy of the People (1978), Satyajit Ray’s Ganashatru (1989), and Erik Skjoldbjærg’s En folkefiende (2005), as they investigate the importance of polysemic allegorical structures, the inherently “dialectical” nature of the process of adaptation, the role of reception in newer theories of adaptation, and the implications of understanding adaptation as a particular film genre. The authors propose viewing adaptation as a process that necessarily includes the audience’s understanding of hypotext and hypertext in ways that influence meaning production; it invites consideration of the source text in the film’s reception, consequently linking the source text and its author to other cultural and social discourses that, in turn, influence their reception reflexively in light of the adaptation.
Holt, Thor (2020). Stories of “Infidelity”: Nazi Ibsen Adaptations and the Norwegian Press. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 20(2). doi: 10.1080/15021866.2020.1825103. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2015). Ibsen’s Firebrand: The Dead Child and Theodicy in Brand. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 15(1), p. 66–98. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2015.1087716. Full text in Research Archive

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Haaland, Agnete G.; Holt, Thor; Hobbelstad, • Inger Merete & Ellingsen, Lena Kristin (2025). Nora og Hedda gjør comeback i Hollywood. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
En panelsamtale med følgende problemstilling: Hva gjør at filmskapere over hele verden griper til Ibsens dramaer i dag?
D'Amico, Giuliano; Holt, Thor & Omdal, Gerd Karin (2025). Forsnakk om Brand. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2022). Repurposing of Music in Early Sound Film: Grieg in Fritz Lang’s M (1931). Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2022). Preface. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 22(2), p. 105–106. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2022.2125211. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2021). På kino med Kracauer. Vagant. ISSN 0802-0736. p. 372–382. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2021). Skrotplukkeren. [Journal]. Vagant. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor; Lindholm, Audun & Leivestad, Eirik Høyer (2021). Siegfried Kracauer. Det populære er politisk. Vagant. ISSN 0802-0736. p. 292–295. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2021). Beyond Adaptation: Ibsen in Weimar Cinema. Full text in Research Archive
D'Amico, Giuliano; Muniz, Iris & Holt, Thor (2020). Forsnakk. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2020). From Generic Labels to Reception Processes: Jaws (1975) as an Adaptation of An Enemy of the People (1882). Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor; Rentschler, Eric & Rasmussen, Mikkel Bolt (2020). Doctoral Defense: Ibsen through the Camera Lens in the Third Reich. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 20(2), p. 220–248. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2020.1834737. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2020). Preface. Ibsen Studies. ISSN 1502-1866. 20(1), p. 1–2. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2020.1757304. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2016). Ølkjellermennesket. Om Dietrich Eckart. Vagant. ISSN 0802-0736. p. 51–57. Full text in Research Archive
Holt, Thor (2020). Far from Home: Ibsen through the Camera Lens in the Third Reich. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
This dissertation explores film adaptations of Henrik Ibsen in the Third Reich. Which Ibsen texts were adapted and why, how was Ibsen adapted in Nazi cinema, and, finally, what were the ideological implications of these films? Delineating Ibsen adaptations as films recognized as such in the contemporary context, I explore Hans Hinrich’s Das Meer ruft (1933), Fritz Wendhausen’s Peer Gynt (1934), Detlef Sierck’s Stützen der Gesellschaft (1935), Hans Steinhoff’s Ein Volksfeind (1937), and Harald Braun’s Nora (1944) as audiovisual artifacts that carried numerous and often contradictory levels of meaning. The dissertation draws upon poststructuralist turns in adaptation theory and cultural studies, and situates the respective films in their immediate historical context. Applying heterogeneous models of ideology rather than deterministic propaganda models, I argue that the five films are prisms of the inner contradictions in the matrix of Nazi ideology

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Published Feb. 11, 2015 11:43 AM - Last modified Jan. 8, 2024 11:17 AM

Projects

No ongoing projects