Greek Summer School

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Designed to improve knowledge of Greek among Byzantinists and others interested in the world of Byzantium (especially since related courses are only taught in a very small minority of universities around the world), Dumbarton Oaks is hosting an intensive four-week Byzantine Greek Summer School program from July 1 to July 26, 2024. We will be welcoming 10 graduate students from schools across the globe.

Program Description

The principal course will be a daily 1½ 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. Approximately eleven hours per week will be devoted to formal classroom instruction. In the remaining hours of the week, students will prepare their assignments.

Participants will receive a Dumbarton Oaks Library Reader’s Badge for the duration of the program. 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

Alexandros Alexakis, University of Ioannina

Stratis Papaioannou, University of Crete

Admission Requirements

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 may be administered to finalist applicants before successful candidates are selected.

Accommodation, Travel, and Expenses

Successful applicants will receive on-campus housing (with the exception of participants living in the greater Washington area) and lunch on weekdays (with the exception of scheduled closures). Dumbarton Oaks has partnered with a travel agency to arrange and pre-pay for participants’ round-trip air or rail travel, in accordance with the Dumbarton Oaks Travel Policy. International candidates are eligible to apply; however, J-visa sponsorship is not available. A stipend is not offered for this program.

Applications

Applications, to be written in English, must be submitted electronically by February 15, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.

To apply, applicants must include a cover letter describing their academic background, career goals, previous study of Greek, and reasons for wishing to attend the summer school, a curriculum vitae and a list of all Greek authors and/or texts previously read in the original, and a transcript of graduate school record (a copy of unofficial transcripts is acceptable).

Additionally, one letter of recommendation is required for all applicants, assessing the candidate’s present level of competence in ancient or medieval Greek.

Selection criteria will include (but are not limited to) the program’s relevance to applicants’ present and future research projects. Awards will be announced in late February 2024.

For further information, please write to Felix Szabo, Byzantine Studies program coordinator, at byzantine@doaks.org.

Past Years

2012

June 4–29, 2012 | Alice-Mary Talbot (Dumbarton Oaks, emerita) and Stratis Papaioannou (Brown University)

Participants

• Annika Asp-Talwar
• Richard Barrett
• Lorenzo Ciolfi
• Katarzyna Gara
• Andras Kraft
• Andrew Larson
• Tom Maranda
• Lee Mordechai
• James Morton
• Nicole Paxton