Anthony Smith

Anthony Smith has served as a Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant in the Department of Classics for the last 7 years. He received a BA in Classics from Boston College and an MA in Classics from the University of Florida. In February, he successfully defended his dissertation “Looking Forward, Looking Back: Katabasis on Contemporary Stages,” which examines the role of the ancient underworld journeyer (particularly Hercules, Odysseus, Orpheus, and Aeneas) and how this is modified and transformed for contemporary popular media (Hadestown, Supernatural, and The Magicians). He has published on Vergil (New England Classical Journal) and pedagogy (Journal for Classics Teaching) and has presented on numerous topics, including Vergilian and Ovidian metapoetry, pedagogy, and the modern reception of the ancient katabasis. He is a two-time winner of the UF Graduate Student Teaching Award (2022, 2025) and is a Tedder Family Fellow in the Humanities (2025–26) through the UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere. Beyond his research and teaching courses in the Classics Department, Honors Program, and First Year Florida, he has actively won grants for public humanities projects, hosted research conferences for graduate and undergraduate students, served on the Source Databases Committee for Antiquity in Media Studies, and served as Preview Graduate Intern (2022–26). In Summer A 2026, he will teach Classical Mythology online for the UF Department of Classics before moving to Iowa City, where he will work as an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Classics at the University of Iowa.