Smith, Kyle

Kyle Smith, Assistant Professor of Historical Studies (UTM) and Religion (St. George), studies early Christianity. His primary research focus is late ancient Syriac Christianity on the eastern Roman frontier and in the Sasanian Persian Empire. Currently, Smith is in the process of completing two books: the first is a Syriac-English edition of the martyr acts of Simeon bar Sabba’e, a bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris and the protomartyr of the “Great Persecution” in fourth-century Persia; the second book, a revision of his 2011 doctoral dissertation, employs a number of Syriac, Greek, and Latin sources to contextualize and re-examine how Christian religious identity in Roman Mesopotamia and Sasanian Persia was constructed, negotiated, and re-written in the aftermath of the emperor Constantine’s death.