Alex Tarbet

Alex studies world folklore as it appears in Greek and Latin prose. His dissertation, Folk Humor in the Greco-Egyptian Imagination, explores Egyptian tales, jokes, and comic anecdotes about the pharaohs as they were (mis)received in Herodotus and the popular Aesop and Alexander traditions. He also has interest in Lucian and Apuleius as literary artists of Greco-Roman intellectual life and other popular receptions of Plato and Socrates.

Alex spent nearly a decade working as a janitor and in lumber yards. He 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.