About the Guest
Kathryn Caliva Smart is Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Classics Minor at St. Bonaventure University. Her teaching and research span Greek and Roman civilization, mythology, and Latin language, with particular emphasis on the literary and cultural worlds of ancient Greece.
Her scholarship explores the intersection of poetry and religion in antiquity, focusing on how narrative, myth, and divine speech shape authority and belief in ancient texts. She is also interested in the social roles of women in the ancient world and the voices of female speakers in Greek literature.
Professor Smart’s work has appeared in leading journals including Classical Philology and the American Journal of Philology, with recent publications on divine speech and mythic authority in archaic Greek poetry. She is currently developing a monograph on speech acts in Greek lyric, examining how poetic speakers construct authority through relationships with the divine and mastery of mythic knowledge.