Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith has taught at the University of Toronto since 2011. He is currently associate professor and Director of the History of Religions Program in the Department of Historical Studies at UTM. On the St. George campus, he is a graduate member of the Department for the Study of Religion and an associate faculty member of the Centre for Medieval Studies. In 2015, he received the University's inaugural Early Career Teaching Award. 

Professor Smith's research focuses primarily on the history of Christianity in Roman Mesopotamia and the Sasanian Persian Empire in the late antique period (ca. 200-650 CE). He has edited and translated several Christian martyrdom narratives from Syriac, including The Martyrdom and History of Blessed Simeon bar Sabba'e (Gorgias Press, 2014) and (with J.-N. Mellon Saint-Laurent) The History of Mar Behnam and Sarah: Martyrdom and Monasticism in Medieval Iraq (Gorgias Press, 2018). His first monograph, Constantine and the Captive Christians of Persia: Martyrdom and Religious Identity in Late Antiquity, was published by the University of California Press in 2016. Recently published by the University of California Press, his book for a more general audience entitled Cult of the Dead: A Brief History of Christianity was released in 2022.

Current Course(s)

RLG 3216 Christianity in the Ancient Near East