Edward (Ted) Kelting

Edward (Ted) Kelting received his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University in 2019 and his A.B. in Egyptology and Classics from Brown University in 2012. His research ranges across Egypt, Greece, and Rome in the early-imperial period. He is the author of Egyptian Things: Translating Egypt to Early Imperial Rome. Its titular “Egyptian Things” was an auto-ethnographic literary tradition called Aegyptiaca, in which culturally mixed Egyptians wrote about Egypt and its past for a Greek and Roman audience. His next project connects non-human animal precarity to other forms of ethnic, gendered, and social discrimination in imperial-era literature. At UCSD, he currently serves as director of the Center for Hellenic Studies.

For CV and an up-to-date list of publications with PDFs, see here.

Pronouns: He/His

Languages: Latin, Greek, traditional Egyptian, French, German

Affiliated Faculty: Classical Studies Program, Black Diaspora and African American Studies Program, Center for Hellenic Studies.

Books

• Egyptian Things: Translating Egypt to Early Imperial Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2024. LINK

Articles & Book Chapters

• “Slavery and Interspecies Solidarity in Androcles and the Lion: Egyptian and Aesopic Perspectives.” In Edward Kelting and Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne (eds.), “Animals under Empire.” Special Issue, Arethusa 58.2 (2025): 195–224. LINK
• “Social Organization, Culture, Identity, and Ritual.” In A Cultural History of Slavery and Human Trafficking In the Ancient World, edited by Grant Parker and David Cohen. London: Bloomsbury, 2024: 93–108.
• “‘Apollonius Speaks Greek, Petiharenpi Speaks Egyptian:’ Cross-Cultural Self-Fashioning in the Serapeum Archive.” In Hellenistic Literature and Culture: Studies in Honor of Susan A. Stephens, edited by Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne, and Phiroze Vasunia. London: Bloomsbury, 227–238. LINK
• “Bodies of Knowledge in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius.” Mnemosyne 76 (2023): 591–616. LINK
• “‘Characterizing’ Lucius: Pythagoreanism and the Figura in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses.” American Journal of Philology 142.1 (2021): 103–136. LINK
• “Am I the Ibis or the Snake? Totemism, Satire, and Community in Juvenal Satire 15.” TAPA 149.2 (2019): 419–53. LINK

Edited Volumes

• “Animals under Empire." Co-edited with Jacqueline Arthur-Montagne. Special Issue, Arethusa 58.2 (2025). LINK

• Ph.D. in Classics, Stanford University, 2019
• A.B. in Classics and Egyptology, Brown University, 2012