Ecole d’été – Dumbarton Oaks’ Byzantine Greek Summer School 2016


 Dumbarton Oaks

2016 Byzantine Greek Summer School
July 5 to July 29, 2016

Dumbarton Oaks will again offer an intensive four-week course in medieval Greek and paleography in the early summer of 2016. Approximately ten places will be available, with priority going to students without ready access to similar courses at local or regional institutions.

Course Offerings

The principal course will be a daily 1 ½ hour session devoted to the translation of sample Byzantine texts. Each week texts will be selected from a different genre, e.g., historiography, hagiography, poetry, and epistolography. Two afternoons a week hour-long sessions on paleography will be held. In addition each student will receive a minimum of one hour per week of individual tutorial. Thus approximately eleven hours per week will be devoted to formal classroom instruction. In the remaining hours of the week students will prepare their assignments.

Students will also have the opportunity to study inscribed objects in the Byzantine Collection, and view facsimiles of manuscripts in the Dumbarton Oaks Rare Books Collection, as well as original manuscripts in the Byzantine Collection. Any extra time may be used for personal research in the Dumbarton Oaks library, but support for the summer school is intended first and foremost for study of Byzantine Greek language and texts.

Faculty

Alexander Alexakis, University of Ioannina
Stratis Papaioannou, Brown University

Accommodation and Costs

No tuition fees will be charged. Successful candidates from outside the Washington area will be provided with housing at no cost and lunch on weekdays. Local area students will not be offered accommodation, but will receive free lunch on weekdays. Students are expected to cover their own transportation expenses.

Requirements for Admission

Applicants must be graduate students in a field of Byzantine studies (or advanced undergraduates with a strong background in Greek). Two years of college-level ancient Greek (or the equivalent) are a prerequisite; a diagnostic test will be administered to finalist applicants before successful candidates are selected.

Application Procedure

Applicants should send a letter by February 1, 2016, to Dr. Michael Maas, Director of Byzantine Studies, describing their academic background, career goals, previous study of Greek, and reasons for wishing to attend the summer school. The application should also include a curriculum vitae and a transcript of the graduate school or undergraduate record. Two letters of recommendation should be sent separately, one from the student’s adviser, and one from an instructor in Greek, assessing the candidate’s present level of competence in ancient or medieval Greek. Principles of selection will include three considerations: previous meritorious achievement, need for intensive study of Byzantine Greek, and future direction of research. Awards will be announced in late February 2016, and must be accepted by March 15.

Please send all required materials to:

Dumbarton Oaks
Byzantine Studies Program
1703 32nd Street, NW
Washington, DC 20007

Tel.: 202-339-6940 FAX: 202-298-8409, Email: Byzantine@doaks.org

Ecole d’été – Swedish Research Institute, Istanbul

Ecole d’été

Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul

Medieval approaches to reading

23–28 May 2016

This summer school will explore discourses and strategies of reading and pleasure in the Middle Ages. From what appears to have been a primarily pious, learned, and/ or legal use of reading in the early medieval period, books and texts came to be gradually and increasingly associated with notions of pleasure. On the one hand, different kinds of explicit or implicit pleasure made up literary motifs and became a literary theme; on the other, pleasure came to be thought of – at least by some – as fundamental to reading. This tendency concerns not just narrative fiction and poetry, traditionally associated with reading for pleasure, but also genres such as epistolography and historiography. And patterns turn out surprisingly similar in both Persian, Arabic, Byzantine and Western medieval environments.

In theory as in practice, pleasure is easily sought, but equally easily slips out of grasp. The aim of the summer school is to engage with and develop specific approaches that will enable us to discuss medieval developments – of great impor- tance for later premodern and modern literary thinking – across the time gap, but also across the spatial gap between east and west. Aiming for conceptual clarity, we encourage participants to consider the pleasure of storytelling and narrative urges, but also the modern pleasure of reading medieval texts. We wish to open up for a wide range of genres – such as romance, drama, chronography, court poetry, and letters – and numerous perspectives, for instance performance, text/image recog- nition, book production, genre questions, author-narrator position, or gendered roles in and outside the text.

Some possible themes include Persian, Arabic, Byzantine and Western literature; Middle Ages; reading and storytelling; translations; romance; drama; poetry; letters; chronography; court culture; book history; illuminations; gender studies.

Programme

The summer school will be organized around lectures, discussion groups and time for informal talk. In the mornings, lectures, all of which will be followed by a seminar of the whole group, will address large themes. In the afternoon, smaller seminar groups, each led by a tutor, will work together over the course of the summer school on a series of case studies. These will be combined with smaller excursions by foot. There will be substantial reading in advance. Lunches and two dinners will be in common. On Wednesday there will be a longer excursion.

Tutors are Christian Høgel (University of Southern Denmark), Lars Boje Mortensen (University of Southern Denmark), Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala University), and Elizabeth Tyler (University of York).

Lectures will be delivered by Virginia Langum (Uppsala University), Pernilla Myrne (University of Gothenburg), Stratis Papaioannou (Brown University), and Bo Utas (Uppsala University).

Practical Information

Applications

Applications should be sent before 1st of December 2015 to hogel@sdu.dk.

The summer school is open to PhD students of medieval history, linguistics, literature and philology. Students’ research should preferably involve texts in at least two medieval languages, and they will be expected to read English and either French or German. Lectures and seminars will be held in English. Your application should include an abstract of your current research (no more than one side of A4, single spaced) and a statement addressing the contributions you can make to the summer school and what you hope to gain from participating (no more than one side of A4, single spaced). You must also name one referee who will be willing to write in support of your application. Referees of short-listed applicants will be contacted directly by the organizers of the summer school.

There is no cost for attending the Summer School.

Bursaries

Five bursaries (cost of transportation to Istanbul) will be available. Please address your application to hogel@sdu.dk before 1st of December 2015, precising your costs and financial need.

Accommodation and transport

Accommodation will be provided for the participants at the Swedish institute or at hotels in the vicinity.

Meals

Lunches and two dinners will be provided by the organizers. The participants will take care of the other meals.

This project is organized by the section for Greek and Byzantine Studies (Uppsala University) and the Centre for Medieval Literature (University of Southern Denmark and the University of York).

Ecole d’été – Swansea Summer School in Ancient Languages

Swansea Summer School in Ancient Languages

Swansea University and the South West Wales Classical Association are pleased to announce the second Summer School in Ancient Languages which will take place 17 – 30 July 2016.

Courses

One- and two-week intensive courses are available in Beginners, Post-Beginners, Intermediate, Post-Intermediate, and Advanced Latin and Greek, Beginners and Post-Beginners Hieroglyphs, and Medieval Latin.

There are 3 hours of tuition every weekday (2 on Wednesdays), and extracurricular talks, films, and trips to sites of historical interest in the Wales on Wednesday afternoons in weekends.

Bursaries

We are able to offer part bursaries to participants with low income and students. Discounts are also available for early-bird registration (until end November) and students at all levels of education.

Registration

For more information and to register, please go to our website: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/hc/summerschoolinancientlanguages/. If you are unsure of which level of Latin or Greek you should study, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Registration can be done both online and through hard-copy application forms which are also available on our website.

For more information, please contact Dr Evelien Bracke (Summer School Director) off-list at e.bracke@swansea.ac.uk. A report of the 2015 Summer School can be found on our Departmental blog: https://historyclassics.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/the-first-swansea-summer-school-in-ancient-languages/.

For more information about promoting Classics in South Wales, see:

Swansea University History and Classics Outreach: http://www.swansea.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/hc/informationforschools/
Cymru Wales Classics Hub: www.cymruwalesclassicshub.weebly.com
South West Wales Classical Association: www.swwclassicalassociation.weebly.com

Ecole d’été – Lincoln College Summer School of Greek Paleography

Lincoln College Summer School of Greek Paleography

The sixth Lincoln College International Summer School in Greek Palaeography will be held on 1-6 August 2016. The school offers a five-day introduction to the study of Greek manuscripts through ten reading classes, four library visits and five thematic lectures.

Costs: The school will charge student fees of 100 British Pounds, payable prior to the first day of classes. Students are individually responsible for their transportation and living expenses in Oxford. A minimum of four bursaries, covering fees and housing (but no board), will be awarded to particularly deserving applicants.

Daily schedule: 8:45-10:45 reading class, 11:00-13:00 library visit, 13:00-14:45 lunch break, 14:45-16:45 reading class, 17:00-18:00 lecture. A final written examination will be administered on Saturday, 6 August, 9:00-12:00.

Instructors: Christos Simelidis (D.Phil. Oxon.), Dimitris Skrekas (D.Phil. Oxon.), Georgi R. Parpulov (Ph.D. Chicago)

Lectors: Nigel G. Wilson FBA (Oxford), Prof. Marc Lauxtermann (Oxford), Dr Petros Bouras-Vallianatos (London), Marjolijne Janssen (Cambridge)

Application: The final deadline for applying is 15 February 2016.
Applicants are requested to send to Dr Simelidis at csimelidis@gmail.com their curriculum vitae, explain in detail their need for attending the summer school, and indicate whether they wish to be considered for a bursary. They should also arrange for one recommendation letter from an established academic to be e-mailed to csimelidis@gmail.com before 15 February 2016. Successful applicants will be notified on 30 February 2016.

Note: The school is intended for students of Classics, Patristics, Theology, Biblical or Byzantine Studies. Potential applicants are advised that it only offers introductory-level instruction in Greek palaeography and codicology. Adequate knowledge of Greek is a must for all students.

Ecole d’été – Dumbarton Oaks/ HMML Syriac Summer School 2016

Ecole d’été

Dumbarton Oaks/ HMML Syriac Summer School 2016

Dumbarton Oaks and the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library announce a new four-week intensive introduction to Syriac language and paleography, July 10 to August 6, 2016. The program, sponsored and funded by Dumbarton Oaks, will be hosted at HMML, located on the campus of Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota. The summer school will include a long weekend in Washington, DC, to visit Dumbarton Oaks and other institutions in the area to learn more about their resources for Byzantine and Eastern Christian studies.

Approximately ten places will be available to doctoral students and recent PhDs, including early-career faculty members, who can demonstrate the value of Syriac for their teaching and research. All costs apart from travel to and from Saint John’s University (nearest airport: Minneapolis-St Paul) will be covered by Dumbarton Oaks, including the weekend in Washington, DC.

Mornings will be devoted to Syriac language instruction by Prof. Scott Johnson of the University of Oklahoma, with afternoons devoted to the study of digitized Syriac manuscripts with Dr. Adam McCollum of the University of Vienna (formerly Lead Cataloger of Eastern Christian Manuscripts at HMML). There will be opportunities to use HMML’s collections, as well as to enjoy the campus of 2700 acres, with woods, lakes, and notable architecture.

Further information, including instructions for applicants, can be found here: http://www.hmml.org/doakshmml.html.
Columba Stewart OSB