Steve Reece

Steve Reece (born 1959) grew up in the town of Niigata on the west coast of Northern Japan. He moved to the United States in 1977 to attend college and received a BA and MA at the University of Hawaii and a PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles. He taught at UCLA, Texas A&M University, and Vanderbilt University (Mellon Fellow) before coming to St. Olaf College in 1994. In 2015 he was named the O.C. and Patricia Boldt Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities.

He 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 the author of a book about the rituals of ancient Greek hospitality (The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene, University of Michigan Press) and a book on early Greek etymology (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. His latest book, Paul’s Large Letters: Paul’s Autographic Subscription in the Light of Ancient Epistolary Conventions, has just been published by Bloomsbury T&T Clark.

Reece is engaged in a long-term project on allusions to classical literature in Luke-Acts and the letters of Paul, for which he received a FaCE grant through the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. He has done research at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (Lord Fellowship), the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at the University of Missouri (NEH Fellowship), the American Academy in Rome (Fulbright Fellowship), and the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He has lectured broadly, is called on frequently to act as referee for professional journals and university presses, and has been a consultant for IBM, E.J. Brill Press, and the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition.

He has chaired the St. Olaf Department of Classics, served a term as faculty representative to the St. Olaf Board of Regents, and served as President of the Classical Association of Minnesota. In the summer of 2010 he participated in the archaeological excavations at Tel Megiddo in northern Israel.