Classics

Having read mainly comic books in my early years, I have studied Classics and Philosophy of one sort or another since my days as an undergraduate in the Great Books Program at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. Despite a quite intimidating first encounter with Greek and the works of Plato and Aristotle in my freshman year, a deep fascination with Greek philosophy took hold, and I eventually wrote a senior paper on Plato’s Republic. After graduating I enrolled in an M.A. program in Eastern Classics at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I developed keen interests in Sanskrit, the philosophy of the Upanishads, and Zhuangzi. This led, in turn, to intensive study of Greek and Latin at the Latin/Greek Institute at the City University of New York, as well as to further graduate study in East-West Comparative Philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, in Philosophy at Kings College London (where I wrote an M.Phil. thesis on Plato’s Cratylus), and in Classics, Philosophy and Ancient Science at the University of Pittsburgh. I received a Ph.D. in Classics from Pitt, having written a dissertation, Restoring Parmenides’ Poem, on the fragmentary remains of the early Greek philosopher Parmenides of Elea.

At Gettysburg I am teaching Beginning Latin and Intermediate Latin. I have also taught various courses in myth, classical literature, philosophy and the humanities at the University of Pittsburgh, at West Virginia University, and at Carroll Community College. Areas of current research include the Presocratic poets, the dialogues of Plato, Aristotle’s philosophy of nature, and the later reception of classical thought.

I live in Westminster, Maryland with my wife, Sarah, and our son, Leonard.