Skip to Content

Byzantine Greek Summer School Concludes

Posted On July 02, 2012 | 15:20 pm | by lisaw | Permalink
A summary of the sixth session of the Greek Summer School at Dumbarton Oaks

Alice-Mary Talbot

The sixth session of the biennial Dumbarton Oaks summer school in Byzantine Greek was held between June 4 and 29. The program was co-taught by Alice-Mary Talbot, Director emerita of Byzantine Studies, and by Stratis Papaioannou, Associate Professor of Classics and Director of the Modern Greek Studies Program at Brown University. The school attracted a diverse and lively group of ten doctoral students from the United States and Europe, including four Americans, a Pole, a Finn from the University of Birmingham, a British student now at Berkeley, an Italian studying in Paris, a German studying in Budapest at the Central European University, and an Israeli now at Princeton.

The intense class schedule included sessions of group translation of Greek texts, practice in paleography (the reading of medieval manuscripts), private tutorials, two lectures on Byzantine literature by Margaret Mullett, and an introduction to the resources of Dumbarton Oaks, such as manuscript facsimiles in the Rare Book Library and manuscripts and inscribed objects in the Museum collection.

The Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Greek summer school alternates annually with a similar program at the Gennadeion Library at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, modeled on the Dumbarton Oaks curriculum. Following a rigorous selection process, Dumbarton Oaks covers accommodation and half-board for successful applicants, and does not charge tuition.