Incoming Faculty

    Kyle Helms

    Assistant Professor of Classics

    helms1@stolaf.edu
    Tomson Hall 366
    (507) 786-3952

    B.A. (Classics and Philosophy), University of Florida, 2008
    M.A. (Classics), University of Iowa, 2010
    M.A., Ph.D. (Classics), University of Cincinnati, 2013, 2016

    Kyle Helms is interested in the social and cultural history of communication in the Greco-Roman world. He specializes in rhetoric, epigraphy, papyrology, digital humanities, and experiential pedagogy. He is a field team leader and an editor for the Ancient Graffiti Project (ancientgraffiti.org) as well as a collaborator with the Epigraphic Database Roma (edr-edr.it), based at Sapienza-Università di Roma. Currently he is creating new, digital editions for 400 Latin and Greek graffiti from Pompeii, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

    In recent months Helms has given presentations on the Old North Arabian inscriptions at Pompeii and on the evidence for Quintilian’s relationship with the short-lived emperor Galba. His latest publication (co-authored with Michael Zellmann-Rohrer) examines a private letter, sent between Egypt and Constantinople, that seems to point to the ancient pearl trade (Chronique d’Égypte 2017). He is now at work on a book about the relationship between rhetorical education and political power at Rome; it approaches rhetoric not as a collection of rules and tropes, but rather as a system of knowledge in a specific cultural and social context.

    Helms previously served on the faculty at Creighton University (2016-17) and at the University of Puget Sound (2017-18). This is his first year at St. Olaf. When not reading ancient languages or wandering around the Bay of Naples, he loves distance running, watching baseball and soccer games, baking bread, and, above all, spending time with his wife Caitlin and their two daughters, Hattie (4) and Phoebe (2).

    Courses in 2018-2019:  Semester I = Classics 244 (The Golden Age of Rome), Greek 231 (Intermediate Greek), Latin 111C (Beginning Latin I); Interim = Classics 1?? (new course, not yet approved); Semester II = Latin 112B (Beginning Latin II), Latin 374 (Cicero & Latin Prose)

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