Daniel Smith

Daniel Charles Smith is an Assistant Professor of Classics at Whitman College. He earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2022. His teaching focuses on religion in the Ancient Mediterranean world, including the formations of Judaism and Christianity, constructions of disability, and the role of imperialism in religious discourse and practice. He also teaches Greek and Latin courses in the Department of Classics.

Drawing on ancient texts written in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, and Syriac as well as material evidence from the Roman East, he researches the construction and deployment of difference in the context of religion in the Ancient Mediterranean world. His first book project investigates the ways imperial and material processes shaped the appeal and suspicion of exotic religion in the Roman Empire, with particular attention to the New Testament Apocalypse of John. His current research explores disablement and bodily difference and their deployment within religious texts and material culture from the Ancient Mediterranean.