Joe Walsh is Professor and Chair of Classics at Loyola College. He teaches courses on Greek and Roman authors; history courses like History of Christmas, Roman Private Life, and The Multicultural Roman Empire; and courses on Greek and Roman culture like Classical Mythology. He recently won the American Philological Association’s 2007 Excellence in Teaching at the College Level Award.
Professor Walsh researches and publishes works on Greek and Roman history, the classical tradition, the early Christians, and the history of Christmas. Professor Walsh’s article, “Newman’s Idea of a Classical University” (Renascence 56.1 [2003]: 21-41) won the Joseph M. Schwartz Memorial Essay Prize (2006) for best article published in Renascence in the past two years. His most recent article is “Washington Irving’s Comic Aeneas and the Apotheosis of Santa Claus,” Classical and Modern Literature 26.2 (2006): 22-49.
Professor Walsh’s book, "Were They Wise Men or Kings?" (Westminster John Knox) appeared in 2001, and most recently he edited and wrote the introduction to "What Would You Die For? Perpetua’s Passion" (Apprentice House, 2005), which largely consists of the prison diary of an early African martyr and is the earliest writing by a Christian woman that is known to exist. This text originated from a Latin class Professor Walsh taught and is the first in Loyola College’s Aperio Series of texts edited, translated, and/or written by undergraduate students; the student authors of "What Would You Die For?" translated the original Latin and provided detailed notes to the text.
Professor Walsh spent academic year 1985-86 at the American Academy in Rome as a Rome Prize Fellow. He studied in Greece as the first Broneer Fellow of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 1986-87. He spent two years in Augsburg, Germany, as a DAAD (the German Exchange Service) Fellow from 1981 to 1983. Professor Walsh received his B.A. in Classics from Fairfield University and his Ph.D. in Classics from The University of Texas.