Welcome to the Boldt Chair of Humanities Web Page!
The Boldt Chair of Humanities was established in 1994 by Oscar C. Boldt and his wife Patricia Hamar Boldt. The Chair is offered to a St. Olaf faculty member whose scholarship and professional endeavors advance the teaching and learning of humanities at the baccalaureate level. It is awarded for a term of three years. Prior holders are James Farrell (History), Carol Holly (English), Edward Langerak (Philosophy), Gordon Marino (Philosophy), Diana Postlethwaite (English), Solveig Zempel (Norwegian), and John Barbour (Religion).
Steve Reece is the current Boldt Chair (2015-2018). Steve grew up in the town of Niigata on the West coast of Northern Japan, 
where he lived until entering college. He earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Classical and European Languages at the University of Hawaii, and a Ph.D. in Classics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He taught at UCLA, Texas A&M University, and Vanderbilt University (Mellon Fellow) before joining the St. Olaf faculty in 1994, where he is now Full Professor in the Department of Classics. His teaching and research focus on Homeric studies, New Testament studies, comparative oral traditions, and historical linguistics.
Steve’s scholarly work includes research done at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Lord Fellowship), the American Academy in Rome (Fulbright Fellowship), the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri (National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship), the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan (National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship), the archaeological excavations of Tel Megiddo in Israel, and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C.
Steve has published a wide variety of articles and book chapters on Homeric studies, New Testament studies, comparative oral traditions, historical linguistics, and pedagogy. He is also the author of a book about the rituals of ancient Greek hospitality entitled The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene (University of Michigan Press). A few years ago he authored a book on early Greek etymology entitled Homer’s Winged Words: Junctural Metanalysis in Homer in the Light of Oral-Formulaic Theory (E.J. Brill Press), for which he received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. He recently completed a book-length study of the handwriting styles used among ancient Greek, Roman, and Jewish letter writers (to be published by T&T Clark Press in 2017), and he is now engaged in a project on allusions to Classical and Hellenistic literature in Luke-Acts and the letters of Paul, for which he received a FaCE grant through the Associated Colleges of the Midwest.
During his term as Boldt Chair Steve is focusing on the study of material culture in the Humanities. Fall events and activities concentrate on the disciplines of archaeology and museum studies, Spring events and activities on the history of the book as a material object.
Please follow the link on the left to find out about upcoming activities and events sponsored by the Boldt Chair of Humanities. All members of the St. Olaf community are welcome to participate.