Joseph Ryan Kelly is a scholar of the Hebrew Bible with experience teaching humanities courses in both secondary and higher-education contexts. At Rhodes, he has taught in both the Search and Life programs. He researches ethical attitudes and perspectives of ancient people preserved in the Hebrew Bible along with the ethical presuppositions underpinning these attitudes and perspectives. He is currently working on a book that examines the relationship between ethical norms, concepts of justice, and gods in ancient Mesopotamia and Greece and compares it to the same in the Hebrew Bible.
After serving four years as support staff in Educational Studies, Dr. Kelly now serves as the Teacher Licensure Coordinator in Educational Studies. In this role, he shepherds education majors on the licensure track through the process of becoming licensed teachers and helps maintain the licensure program's accreditation with the state of Tennessee. He also draws on his practitioner experience in the secondary classroom to teach courses in the Educational Studies program like Educational Technologies.
