The following material was placed on the web by Prof. Sienkewicz of Monmouth College, If you have any questions, you
can contact him at toms@monm.edu.
About the 14th Bernice L. Fox Lecturer
Kenneth F. Kitchell, Jr. is a native of Massachusetts. From as early as he can remember, he sat
on his family's broad front porch and studied bygone ages. At first he wanted to be an
archaeologist and read all he could in his little town library about dinosaurs, cave men, Egypt,
Babylonians and Assyrians, and finally, Greece and Rome.
He entered high school during the Sputnik scare when high scoring children were seen as a way
to win the space race. His early curriculum therefore included Russian, advanced mathematics,
and accelerated science. Much to his math and science teachers' relief, it also included Latin.
From the time he first studied Latin, there was no looking back and he knew that he would be a
teacher of Classics.
Kitchell was a senior at the College of the Holy Cross when Monmouth's Prof. Sienkewicz was a
lowly freshman. At the Cross he took every Classics course he could find and dodged every math
course he saw. In 1969, armed with his Classics B.A., he entered graduate studies at Loyola
University of Chicago. During this period he was named the Hetty Goldman Fellow at the
American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, an event that solidified his interest in
things Greek for all time. Shortly after his return from Greece, however, he began teaching high
school Latin at Quigley Preparatory High School in Chicago. These two years showed him all
sides of teaching --- its hard work, its frustrations, and, above all, its infinite rewards. It is to
these years that he owes his love of teaching and his firm desire to promote Classics study
wherever and however he can.
Kitchell was hired at Louisiana State University as an instructor in 1975. He finished his
dissertation in 1976 and was named Alumni Distinguished Professor of the Classics in 1997. In
Fall, 1998 he moved to University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to work in their MAT Program,
which is dedicated to training teachers of Latin, K-12.
Kitchell has won several teaching awards, including the Amborski Distinguished Honors
Professor Award (1993), the LSU Student Government Association Faculty Award (1991), the
American Philological Association Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Classics (1983); and
the Amoco Foundation Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching (1980). He has been
listed in such works as Marquis' Who's Who in the South and Southwest; and Who's Who in
American Education. He has written over forty articles and is most recently co-author of the two
volume Albertus Magnus De Animalibus: A Medieval Summa Zoologica, with I. Resnick (Johns
Hopkins Press) and edited a thematic issue of Classical Bulletin entitled Entering the Stadium.
Approaches to Ancient Greek Athletics. His research interests include ancient and medieval
animals and animal lore, Catullus, Crete, Classics during the Civil War, and pedagogical matters
involved in teaching Latin and Greek.
Kitchell has been active in promoting the study of Classics for such groups as the Classical
Association of the Middle West and South and the American Philological Association, most
recently serving as the APA's Vice-President for Education and the chair of the Committee for
the Promotion of Greek.
Kitchell has presented over seventy scholarly talks but can think of nothing more pleasant than
presenting in a lecture series named for that most gracious and learned lady, Bernice Fox.