PhD in Classical Studies
3250 Angell (English dept.) Great Books office.
About
Alex studied Philosophy, History, Greek and Latin at Utah State University. He's interested in popular humor and its relation to tyrants in ancient fiction. His dissertation, Worlds Upside Down: Popular Humor in the Greco-Egyptian Imagination, explores how common international folktales traveled and were received across cultures in early contact between Greece and Egypt. He has given conference papers on comic pharaohs in Herodotus, playful allegory in Proclus, and the parody of the Phaedrus in the Golden Ass. He has taught and learned with the women of the Inside-Out prison education program. At UM, he has taught Greek Mythology, Greek Civilization, Great Books, and summer course of his own design called Parageography, the study of imaginary worlds.
Alex grew up in a small town in rural Idaho ruled by an iron-hoofed oligarchy of prominent cows. The son of a plumber, he believes that all things eternally roll downhill.
