VL: To start off, this is Viviana Lu. I'm summer intern in Byzantine Studies Oral History, and I'm here with Joshua Robinson, who is the Byzantine librarian, and with Professor Alexandros Alexakis. Thank you so much for joining me. And our first question is, how did you come to hear about Dumbarton Oaks, and what were your initial impressions of the institution the first time you heard about it?
AA: It was the year back in 1990. I was finishing my dissertation at Oxford. It was either Cyril Mango or his wife Marlia who gave us, three students in fact, not only me, but also Professor Stephanos Efthymiadis and Professor Ioannis Polemis, who were studying and finishing, at that time, our dissertation under the supervision of Cyril Mango. Either he or his wife gave us the announcement, and we applied. It seems that we all applied. Actually, I don’t remember if Polemis applied, but Efthymiadis and I applied for a summer fellowship. I got awarded this fellowship for the 1991 summer. But then, sometime in June, if I remember rightly, of the same year 1991, Professor [Angeliki] Laiou called me over the phone and asked me whether I was interested in taking up a Research Associate’s position on the program that was to be initiated in July sometime, yes, in July, in fact, of 1991. And well, I said, yes, okay, all right. I mean, that was the first contact, and I accepted the offer without further ado. I mean, I didn't ask anything apart from a particular amount of monthly salary, which was practically what Laiou had in mind.
So anyway, I started the number as a Summer Fellow in June, and then, if I remember rightly, on July 18 the fellowship ended and started my official employment as a Research Associate of the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Project. We took some time to develop it, but then we put the whole thing together, and I worked for the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography project for almost three years, I think, or four, because then I got a joint appointment in ’94, a joint appointment involving Columbia and Dumbarton Oaks, which was to start in, I think, September of ’94 up until the end of June of 2000. That was joint, in fact, which means that I had to spend one semester of research at Dumbarton Oaks and the other semester every year at Columbia University in New York. Now, all in all, if you're asking me, apart from two appointments outside Dumbarton Oaks, which was the 2000-2004 Stockton University appointment. 2003, in fact, but I kept the appointment for one more year on a leave of absence from Stockton because I took over another position at the University Ioannina. All my other positions are at Dumbarton Oaks. So I don't know if you mind going to the next step and saying, “What is the part that involves my DO appointments?” But honestly, apart from the period between 2003 and 2009, in which I had no real connection with Dumbarton Oaks in any kind of official appointment, since then, all these other years I've been, one way or another, a member of the Dumbarton Oaks faculty …— anyway, employee, in some sense.
JR: Could you say a little more about the scope and purpose of the Hagiography Project that you started?
AA: Yes, it came at the heel of the successful publication, that is the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. And [Alexander] Kazhdan was the director, with executive director or something like, you know, number 2 serving, Alice-Mary Talbot under Kazhdan’s spot. And the idea was to come up with a list of realia based on Roget’s thesaurus of concepts, and then start indexing all these basic words and major categories and subcategories. It was a triple level — it is a triple level analysis of the data presented by saints’ lives written and pertaining to saints 8th and 11th AD. Now this turned out to be a really useful tool, because among other things, a number of major books have been written. I only refer to two of them: Thomas Pratsch’s book, the German book on the Topoi in hagiography. Der hagiographische Topos: Griechische Heiligenviten in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit. And then the recent one, in 2019, volume by Alice-Mary Talbot on Byzantine — let me see, I’ll show you how far it goes. Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium 800-1453. This is the Greek translation, and it’s done by me, in fact, and I’m just checking the indexes.
JR: Wonderful.
AA: It’s going to be published very soon in Thessaloniki. And it's all based — not all exclusively — but a major part of the primary material is found from the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database. So, you see, it’s a project started in ’91, and 32 years later is still relevant. And it's easily and freely accessible through the internet. It's online. And I don't know if you count the hits every day, but I still consult it quite often, I mean, even for a number of my graduate courses in the university. It contains a number of topics indexed according to — I'll give an example. Agriculture is the general category, below that you have agricultural tools, for example, and then below that you have a number of other particular terms, among which, say, for example, was a pair of oxen. Or animals. And it brings up the passages in most of the texts with the original Greek text in which this particular reference occurs. So it turns out to be a really useful tool, and along this it seems that Alice-Mary Talbot, with the support especially of Laiou, and later, I suspect of Jan Ziolkowski, hagiography has become a major field of research for Dumbarton Oaks in general. We have the series, we have the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, which has dedicated a number of volumes to hagiographic works. It still continues to feed the research of all people around, you know, Europe, the States. I would say of the entire world. I suspect Africa included because, I guess, in places like South Africa and other places, there are people working on this material.
JR: So you've already anticipated this to some degree, but in what ways did you make use of Dumbarton Oaks resources, and how did you find that the collection uniquely contributed to your research? Or, if I might just add, what did you find you could do there that had not been feasible elsewhere?
AA: To be honest, I was already acquainted with the, and used to use, an excellent library, which is the Bodleian Library in Oxford. But when I came to Dumbarton Oaks, everything was much easier to find, because at Oxford, I may have had to check a volume in the separate section of the Oxford network of libraries. I mean, the Bodleian was the main one, but then I had to go, say, to the Theological Seminary Library, which was a few blocks away, or to the Greek Annex Library, which is further, more blocks away. So, anyway, everything was gathered together at Dumbarton Oaks. And originally that was something which changed later. I guess there were major reasons. But the library, the way the material was cataloged in the Dumbarton Oaks library the time I arrived, in ’91, was an DO idiosyncratic form of cataloging and arrangement of the material which lasted up until the year 2003. And then Dumbarton Oaks introduced the Library of the Congress cataloging style.
Before that change to the LoC cataloging, the advantage was in the cases when I wanted to find a book on a particular topic. When I went down to the library or upstairs, the upper floor, mostly for the journals there, but wherever I went in all parts of the library, the book I was looking for was surrounded by other books on that very same topic. So I didn't have to check around other sections of the library to find a title that was relevant to what I was looking for. And in fact, I used to find a number of book references and other things that I didn't even know when I searched for a particular book. So whenever I went in search of one particular title I eventually ended up coming back to my office with something like five or six books. That was a good thing.
And the other thing is that as you see, most of my early publications, even the later ones [laughing] are related to Dumbarton Oaks. My first book was out in the Dumbarton Oaks Series in 1996, . This was based on my Dissertation, which I re-worked in the library. And if you compare this book to the Oxford DPhil dissertation, there's no relationship whatsoever. I mean, it's double the size, the extent, and it's much more accurate with much richer bibliography. I also have three articles from that period published in the Dumbarton Oaks papers. The second one, in fact, is indicative of what Dumbarton Oaks Library could possibly help and do. If you take a few pages now, (I think they are feeding it — it is the edition of a minor text — now they are feeding it into the TLG) you’ll see that a typical page is something like three or four lines of Greek text and the English translation, and below that, just footnotes, which shows the thoroughness of the bibliography Dumbarton Oaks could offer any researcher.
VL: Thank you for answering that.. And so we've already asked about the Hagiography Project, but what were the other major projects that you were working on while at Dumbarton Oaks?
AA: The other Dumbarton Oaks projects I am involved in are the Byzantine Greek Summer School, which we started in the year 2000 with Alice-Mary Talbot and the late Father George Dennis. I taught the three first summer schools, 2000, 2002, and 2003, and then I left for Greece and my position was taken over by Stratis Papaioannou. I don’t know if you have plans to interview him as well because he is related to Dumbarton Oaks. He continued that along with Alice-Mary, and I think for a few years after, with Father Dennis, although I think that the Dumbarton Oaks Summer School reconvened in the year 2006 after 2003. In the meantime, Papaioannou and I started in Athens the Gennadius Library summer school, which is exactly the same as the Dumbarton Oaks one but on alternate years, which means even years is Dumbarton Oaks, odd years is the Gennadius.
So Pappaioannou continued with Dumbarton Oaks, and then when Alice-Mary retired in the year 2016, I returned to the DO summer school. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to participate in the year 2018 for family reasons. Practically, it's only 6 years that I haven't been involved with Dumbarton Oaks, which is between 2003 and 2009, because in 2009, I was also asked to become a member of the Editorial Board of the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. So I started then together with a number of other colleagues, such as John Duffy, Claudia Rapp , or Alice-Mary Talbot, who was serving as the Editor, and then ten years later in the year 2019, I was promoted to co-editor together with Richard Greenfield. Since then we are running this, I would say, successful series, which has the ambition to complement, improve on the Loeb library and cover the period between the Loeb and the I Tatti libraries of Harvard University Press. We are in contact with part of the personnel of Dumbarton Oaks, both Richard Greenfield and I, and we are working towards producing at least one volume per semester. These are the programs I have been involved in.
JR: So to come back to your early days at Dumbarton Oaks, how would you describe an average day? What would an average day look like when you were working there?
AA: The hagiography project was a full-time job, I mean 9 to 5. Well, my wife wasn't working in the first years, so we lived close by. We rented a house someplace on Wisconsin Avenue first, and then we moved to 39th Street. But both were within walking distance from Dumbarton Oaks. I would start appearing [laughing] at the gate around 9 o’clock, and I was usually expected to leave Dumbarton Oaks at 5. But then, I would stay to work on my dissertation and improve it, and that took me some time. I defended it in 1991, and the book appeared in 1996. The thing is that in Dumbarton Oaks, there was some, and there still is, some sort of community sense-feeling. The pool was a major gathering spot for many of the employees. So once the pool was open, say by May, mid-April, I don’t remember when it opened exactly. I would usually go together with my family in the afternoon and spend some time at the pool, my two kids learning to swim in that lovely environment. And then I would go back home to continue my work until, I don’t know, the early hours of the next day. And then back to Dumbarton Oaks at 9 o’clock.
Then there were also a number of social functions. Laiou was especially keen on collecting the scholarly community together, not only the Byzantinists, but also the landscape architecture and the Pre-Columbian people. And in the course of major feasts like Christmas, or Easter, but also on some other occasions whe would invite the fellows and the personnel to come together and have potluck parties at the Orangery or in the Music Room, especially during Christmas Eve, fro the Christmas party, where the piano was — is — located. I remember people like Virgil Crisafulli, the late–of eternal memory now. I think he was the predecessor of Joshua? Was he, Joshua, or not? But anyway, he used to play the piano, and he was very good. And we would sing Christmas songs and carols. But then we used to have other events, especially in the Orangery, where I would usually play my classical guitar with the Director of landscape architecture of that time, Joachim Wolschke–Bulmahn, who is now in Germany, I think, if he hasn't retired. But that was a very sort of congenial, I would say, setting and atmosphere. I have the idea that it’s not only scholarship that populates my DO memories of that time but also music and numerous gatherings, not only in the spacious functions rooms of the building but also in the gardens.
Another occasion also, rather exceptional, was when we had the invited speakers, five or six yearly lectures, and I don't remember the scheme under which these lectures were promoted. But eventually, after that lecture, we had a dinner at Laiou’s — the Director's — house, which was really nice for the reason that major scholars in our field were invited, and as I was in the beginning of my career by the time, I got to know most of the people in the field, who were in their most advanced stages of their career. So the dinners there were really nice, and Laiou was kind enough to invite myself, not only myself but also my wife, and I remember the first time my son entered the house of the Director, he was impressed by the number of doors [laughing]. Talking in amazement, “Oh, doors!” And in Greek, actually, “Portes, portes!” It was fun. Anyway, this was a period in which we had a sense that, scholarly, we were in a very protected environment, as simple as that. Scholarly speaking.
VL: Our next question was actually about social life, and you've already kind of answered about the functions. But were you able to get to know other fellows and other scholars at the time as well?
AA: Oh, yes, I got to know almost all of the major Byzantine scholars of the caliber of Cyril Mango, for example, GIlbert Dagron. I can start reciting names of that period. Gilbert Dagron, who was the corresponding Byzantinist of Mango for France. Marie-France Auzépy, Dieter Simon, who was a very good colleague and collaborator of Angeliki Laiou. We spent days after days with Kazhdan discussing lots of scholarly issues, Alice-Mary Talbot as well. Another interesting personality was the late professor Robert Browning, who used to come to Dumbarton Oaks every summer and gave us a paleography summer. Eventually he gave me his notes, and I have been using them myself for my paleography classes. And some other people, mostly historians, not philologists as much. Like, say, Cécile Morrisson. Kaplan, Michel Kaplan, and especially Nikolaos Oikonomides. These people were really a part, an organic part of the Dumbarton Oaks scene, and the one who stayed for an entire year after her retirement from the directorship of the Pompidou Centre in France was Helene Glykatzi-Ahrweiler — Ahrweiler as pronounced always at Dumbarton Oaks — who stayed at the house next to Kazhdan next to now where the security offices are located. She spent an entire year at Dumbarton Oaks, and participated in the colloquia.
And we also had seminars, that’s another aspect. You know, the research reports by that time, and I think it still is, a major feature of the Fellows’ obligations. But that was the reason for us to gather together and discuss a number of issues, no matter what the field was among the three ones, because we all attended (and, I guess, the same applies now), all research reports, be they Byzantine or landscape architecture or Pre-Columbian. I think some of these exchanges have ended up in putting together a number of colloquia or symposia. I’ll single out a few of them for one of the subsequent questions concerning the symposia I attended, but apart from the research reports, there was also something else, which I don't know if others have mentioned. But there was at DO always some sort of a reading group. Alice-Mary Talbot started it, and I presented parts of my book on Leo of Catania in the course of this reading group. This reading group, I think started as an endeavor to finish the translation of Leo the Deacon’s history. And we would take turns. It lasted for something like two or three years. Participants alternated — I mean not alternated — participants were usually the Fellows of the year. So in the first year, we may have had — I don’t have the composition of this team, but there may have been Oikonomides or Laiou or Arweiler, George Dennis, Sullivan, the next year Browning, the year after next I don’t remember who else. Eventually the book was published in the series Dumbarton Oaks Studies, a little book, but it seems that a reading group continued — not since, it did continue in fact, and produced a number of other volumes, among which is the very long, thick book, about 500 pages [actually over 800 pages], on the life of Basil the Younger. That was also the subject of the last years of the reading group which I took part of. We started, when was that? ’99, ’98, ’99? The last two years I was at Dumbarton Oaks.
JR: A follow up question: would all of the Fellows attend the reading group, or only certain ones who are interested in texts?
AA: No, they were all. In fact, a few times there were some people from the area. Oh, yes. Elizabeth Fisher, for example, or George Majeska was also around. So part of the reading group, yes, some other people. I also remember the late Lennard Ryden of the University of Uppsala, Marie-France Auzepy, Chrysa Maltezou, Nikolaos Panagiotakis, Ihor Shevchenko, and many others. And other people who were very good scholars. Apart from this reading group there were also seminars. The first year I was there, there was a major seminar. It was the first or the second, yes. Where did I put my notes? Let me see. It was on sex and coercion, a whole seminar. I think it was the first year I was there, ’91, ’92. I think it was put together by Laiou, who eventually published that collective volume, “Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies”, back in early ’96, I think, or 7. And this colloquium ended up — not this colloquium — this seminar culminated in the symposium of that year. Let me see if I have it. Yeah, the Byzantine Studies colloquium, who was the colloquiarch?-- with Angeliki Laiou as the colloquiarch. The title was “Sexual Relations in Marriage and Outside Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies: The Issue of Consent.” So the book was out after that colloquium. I have participated in the seminars and symposia over the decade, from ’91 up to 2000, I was always present in all these seminars but all scholars in residence were participants. So, please, what’s the next question?
JR: So Dumbarton Oaks is interesting in that it has three very different fields all under one roof. How would you characterize the interaction among the Fellows of the three fields?
AA: It is really interesting, but you see, the fruits are something you can see in publications, in the Dumbarton Oaks papers, and in American venues, because it so happens that Pre-Columbian studies in Europe are not that developed. I mean, there is Denmark, I think, a place where you can find some people working on the material, and I don't know much about England. Then in Greece there is no relationship whatsoever to — I mean landscape architecture, academically speaking, there is nothing in this field. So the Fellows that would come, and most of the Byzantine Fellows would come from places like, say, Europe in general, Russia, and even Australia, or what else? Basically Europe and the Americas — America, Northern America — have much to do and ideas to inspire them as long as they stay at Dumbarton Oaks. For Greeks and a number of Europeans, when they get back, there’s no interaction within these two fields. So what you get as a product of Dumbarton Oaks’ experience is something that may appear, as I said, in the American publications, but in Europe there is little you can find. Still, new trends in the field of Byzantine Studies, such as focusing on the emotions now, on touch, on appearance, on performance, and all that stuff is something that has been informed by the happenings at Dumbarton Oaks in general, and especially from both other fields, landscape architecture and the Pre-Columbian. But I suspect landscape architecture is the major influence as it goes.
VL: Our next question you've already also touched on. We were going to ask, have you attended many symposia or colloquia at Dumbarton Oaks?
AA: Oh, yes, I mean, take the list I have printed out here [laughing]. Yeah, I’ve been there. The only I didn’t attend from the colloquia of the 1990s was the first one, but I remember “Byzantium in the Medieval World: Monetary Transactions and Exchange,” which was a very nice colloquium. And there was a colloquium in which I think I also had some input myself, “Computerized Access to Byzantine Saints’ Lives: Roundtable on the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database Project.” I think we also had a session on that topic at the Byzantine Studies — BSC — Conference. I think that was in New York, the year we had this one, the year ’95 or ’96, I think. All of them, the symposia, the program of a number of which I have printed here as a memory aid, were really not only remarkable, but exceptionally successful, I would say. And I have printed out the programs of the five of them out of the nine which I attended, “Aesthetics and Presentation in Byzantine Literature, Art, and Music,” “Byzantine Court Culture from 829 to 1204,” and the, yes, the symposium of 1992, which was the culmination, as I said, of Laiou’s seminars on sex and coercion, titled “Law and Society in Byzantium, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries.” That was a very, say, heavy-duty conference, which involved people like Dieter Simon, J.H.A. Lokin, and also Ruth Macrides, Eleutheria Papagianni, who’s a major Byzantine scholar of the University of Athens, and also Professor Konidaris who is the top canonist in Athens, but also a number of other scholars, including Henry Maguire and Gilbert Dagron, for example. I should not omit Marie Theres Fögen, who was one of the major scholars of the Max Planck Institute (under Dieter Simon) for europäische Rechtsgeschichte. I remember the title, not the title, the content of her final presentation in this symposium, and not only this, there was another one, which was on Byzantine economy.
What was remarkable in this — let me see, was it a colloquium or a symposium? — what was remarkable, and I wrote, I remember, enthusiastic emails to my colleagues in Greece, was the performance of a number of scholars at the question and answer period after the final session. And Professor Oikonomides, the late Nikolaos Oikonomides, was really, I would say not impressive but awe-inspiring with the breadth of his knowledge of economic matters in Greece. He worked on a number of topics which are really, I want to say marginal and very difficult like, you know, the Cadaster of Thebes and the economics of the Byzantine society. This is a major topic which also Laiou was interested in, and she conceived the idea and also edited and published the collective volume on the history of the Byzantine economy, Economic History of Byzantium is the title. And that was also the result of, you know, all these interactions in the course of these symposia. I mean, how can I put it? I have a serious sense that there was and still is, from what I see, an intensive production of knowledge in Dumbarton Oaks. Ah, very interesting as just an aside, in this year’s summer school (2023) I had an American student who is working with Professor Angelov on material that Oikonomides first and Michel Kaplan and a few others had worked on. And it seems that the topic is not fashionable, but you know, it’s an interaction. Andy Chen is his name, I don’t know if you know him.
JR: No.
AA: If you come across him, he’s a very good doctoral candidate.
JR: What’s the name once more?
AA: Andy Chen.
JR: So since you've touched again on the summer school, let me ask a follow up question related to that. Since you have co-taught that summer school so many times, beginning in the year 2000, how would you say that experience has changed over two decades or ways that you have changed your approach or the scope of the course in any way?
AA: One thing I can say for sure, the level of difficulty of the texts we are dealing with is gradually rising. So there are always better and better students, but not that the early ones were not that good. Some were excellent. We have — let me just sidetrack a little and say that we Alice-Mary and I have tracked the careers of the 30, almost 30 students of the three earlier Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Greek summer schools. And it seems that out of 30 people or 29, I don’t remember the exact number, only 3 are not involved with academia. One is a high flying, you know, corporate lawyer. Another one is an Orthodox nun, and the third one I don’t remember. But then among them was, you know, Bissera Pentcheva, the art historian at Stanford, one of the former directors Elena Boeck, she was among the first. And to give you an idea of the level of the early students I had, Elena, I remember Elena was working on the History and the illuminated manuscript of Skylitzes. And she was an art historian! I was tutoring her in the afternoons after the regular morning classes. So I was tutoring Elena. And she was reading Skylitzes. And on one or two occasions she came up with the mistakes that she found in the Greek edition by someone who was well respected at Oxford. An art historian, you know, correcting a philological work, speaks on itself of the level of the students we were and are having. and usually we are one or two students from Harvard University, I mean this year we had one, last year we had another one or two, I don’t remember. This is the way it goes. But it shows — oh, another thing, the development is really spectacular, I would say, in another sense. When we started, we had mostly American students. Now, both in Dumbarton Oaks and in the Gennadius, we have students from all over the world. I'll give you the make up of last year, this year’s I mean, just last month’s summer school. One from Taiwan who grew up both in Taipei and in San Francisco, or no, Los Angeles. One from Mexico, one from Ecuador, okay. Two from Italy, one from Russia, Moscow. Three from the States in general, and one from England. So you see, the only — oh, yes, and one from Australia. Yeah, exactly, one from Australia. So we have covered all continents apart from Africa. But I suspect that in the coming years, someone from the South African state, however this day it is called, will show up because there are a few people teaching Byzantine stuff there.
JR: I suppose it has become more competitive over time?
AA: Yes, exactly.
JR: What is the typical number of applicants for you? You have about 10 spots each year, is that right?
AA: Exactly, 10 to 12, 10 to 12. At Dumbarton Oaks last year I think we had 38 or 36 applications, and this year we have 47. So you see, it rises. It goes on and on and on.
JR: Did the course always include paleography from the beginning?
AA: Yes. It’s exactly the way you saw it. We added or we subtracted, we ignored texts. As years go by we have gathered some experience, I guess, both at the Gennadius and at DO. It’s exactly the same at Dumbarton Oaks. Well, the difference is that the Gennadius has the opportunity of offering students visits to the real places of Byzantine interest, like say, Meteora, or Thessaloniki, where we visit the early basilicas. And, well, that’s something that Dumbarton Oaks may not offer, although the first years, what we did at Dumbarton Oaks the first years was an attempt to acquaint them with some real Byzantine material, and we took them to the Walters Art Gallery, to the museum in Baltimore as well, where they have some of the Antioch mosaics. But then, we have so much at Dumbarton Oaks, and this I think compensates [laughing] for the distance, let’s say, between Mystras and Washington.
VL: Thank you for sharing all of that. Do you have any other stories that stand out in your mind that you feel should be part of the larger institutional memory? Like any anecdotes, any personal stories?
AA: I don't know if I do. This is just one that crops up in my mind now, and it does not belong to the period I worked at Dumbarton Oaks, but it's an early story. It's the story of, you know, the venerable Sir Stephen Runciman and his attempts at getting a glimpse of Elizabeth Taylor. Have you heard about the story? Has anyone narrated this one? Oh, you know, this took place before Dumbarton Oaks acquired the building, which is opposite the Fellows’ building. It's now part of, half of it is dedicated, I guess, to the financial services, and half of it is the residence of the Director, isn’t it?
JR: It’s been renovated as the Director’s residence, I think only as the Director’s residence.
AA: It’s only the Director’s residence, okay.
JR: I think so.
AA: The thing is that in the late seventies and early eighties, it was the residence of Senator Warner, who was married to Elizabeth Taylor. So Stephen Runciman was waking up early in the morning in order to see, as close as possible, Elizabeth Taylor, who was living with the senator by that time. Finally, after many days of waking up early , he managed to see her in person. And then his comment was really, I have to say disappointing. I mean, he didn't like her, and he — actually others have transferred that to me, related this story to me — he said her look was not that refined (he used a word I wouldn’t like to repeat). This is a story that was commonly circulating among the members of the Dumbarton Oaks community in the nineties. In the nineties, we had a, well, negative instance. Professor Warren Treadgold was mugged just outside the Fellows’ building. That was a major issue by that time, because Warren Treadgold, is, as you know, one of the tallest individuals in the world of Byzantinists, and still they had the nerve to mug him just outside the Fellows’ building. So that's something that sticks out in my mind.
JR: And the Fellows’ building at that time is what is now the Guest House, is that right?
AA: Yes, exactly. It's the last before the, you know, that center, behind the soccer field. We used to call it the Fellows’ building. When I was at Dumbarton Oaks also — ’96 ’97, I think — the institution acquired La Quercia. And the name La Quercia was given by a theologian. Oh, goodness me! What was his name? He’s written a whole book on the, he was a great liturgist, Robert Taft. He was the one who gave the building the name La Quercia.
Others, hm. There are interesting stories. It seems that Ahrweiler spent one year as a sort of personal consolation offered to her by Angeliki Laiou because she had to retire from the position of the Chair of the Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris. Thus she was given the opportunity to return to scholarship, and I think, if I remember rightly, she gave a three or four-session seminar on the letter of Manuel Gavras which was really interesting. And not simply interesting, I mean, showed the caliber of the scholarship she could possibly attain. And I think she eventually published the paper based on this. The major topic was that Ottoman Turks have appeared on the European side of the Byzantine empire earlier than the sources of the period before her article indicated. So there was something really original in that.
JR: Have you noticed any significant changes over the time that you've been associated with Dumbarton Oaks, from your first entry as a Summer Fellow to the present?
AA: From what I see, first of all, there is an expansion in terms of, I would say, in terms of space occupied by Dumbarton Oaks. When I first I came, La Quercia was not part of Dumbarton Oaks, the house of the senator on the other side, opposite the Fellows’ building, or the Guest House, then the house of the apartments on the Wisconsin Avenue was not part of the Dumbarton Oaks properties. The gardens were always in excellent shape from what I remember. The pool was somehow different. It was meant for adults. Now, for safety reasons, I think, its depth has been limited to something like 1.60 meters, I think, or something like that. It was not like this back then. And I can give another example of the expansion. The building which houses the security services was divided into two apartments. One was given to Alexander Kazhdan, and the other one was for distinguished guests, such as Ahrweiler, for example. Now, you see, it's just the headquarters of the security services. What else? Many things have been upgraded, for sure. I mean, the place where we have held the dinner or the lunch room used to be the Director's House. That was the place with the many doors that awestruck my son. Below that was the shed of the people who were taking care of the landscape, of the gardens. I mean, you had the chemicals, the fertilizers and all that stuff underneath the Director’s house. And now it's just that room, another room where people can sit and have coffee. This is an upgrade.
Indeed, lots of things have been upgraded. And the major one, which took place under Keenan’s directorship, was the building of the library. The building of the library was something that, you know, seems to have been a major, major issue. And such a library, I think, is exceptional now, in terms Byzantine and landscape bibliography and the holdings in general. I don’t think that the Library of the Congress is better. I'm not sure, but I guess you know better than I, Joshua [laughing]. The thing is that there were reactions to many things, you know, and I have to tell you that I was the chair, president, whatever you call it, of Dumbarton Oaks Alumni Association in the years 2003 and 2004. And then most of the members of the association said that we shouldn't enter the Library of the Congress cataloging scheme because of the reasons I told you a little earlier. And there was a reaction, and Keenan was really angry at the alumni association. But eventually I think that there was some sort of major plan behind it, and the plan was that, you know, this library is there now to be a monument for eternity, I guess. Because there may have been some rumors that Harvard planned to transfer the whole library to Boston. So, anyway, it seems like Keenan knew better. As simple as that.
JR: So do you think there was actually a risk on the part of Harvard that they wanted to bring the collection up there?
AA: This is what was heard by the time. I mean, around the year 2002, 2003, Keenan continued, then completed the whole project later. I don’t remember. 2008, 9, maybe later.
JR: And this is the first time I've heard of an alumni association. Was that a formal association?
AA: I don't remember. I mean, we had a major meeting in the summer of 2002 or 2003 after the Byzantine symposium. But I don't know if this is active now. And that year I signed the letter of you know, complaint as the chair of this association [laughing]. The majority of the alumni were, you know, against the change of the cataloging method.
VL: And you mentioned Laiou and you mentioned Keenan. So you've been at DO under several different directors now including Laiou, Keenan, Jan Ziolkowski, and then, most recently, Thomas Cummins. So, according to you, what impacts have the initiatives undertaken by each of these directors had on the larger field of Byzantine Studies, and at Dumbarton Oaks?
AA: Well, with Laiou, I think there was a major focus on production of knowledge, to put it as simply as possible. The conferences and all the things. But that thing was just the foundation, I suspect, because from what I see now, Keenan simply continued the policies of Laiou in terms of scholarship. But then he tried to, and he did actually start, the policies of expansion from what I understand. Eventually it seems that Jan also conceived that, the major, say, the major orama— sorry, the Greek — the major vision of establishing the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, which I feel that it's a really major project now. And this has, you know, established a number of major fields which, in a number of especially European academic institutions, is not having been cultivated, especially, say, the Iberian medieval texts which have been initiated recently. And then Byzantine material also, I mean for the Byzantine studies, we have only a few venues. I can say the translated texts for historians by the Liverpool University Press, and mostly it was Dumbarton Oaks when it came to translations. But the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, at least for the Byzantine section, but suspect the same is true for the other sections, is trying to establish better texts. I mean, in this sense, we try to rival other publishers like Oxford University Press or De Gruyter. And on some occasions we have achieved texts better than the ones extant already, I mean the Greek or the original text. Translations are doubly — not doubly [laughing] —multiple times checked before they appear in print. So I can, anyway, if I have to return, I will later on, on the level of the scholarship produced by Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, but it seems that there are many other aspects that I have the feeling, not the direct knowledge that Jan promoted. And this is the interaction between the three sections of the departments of Dumbarton Oaks: Byzantine, landscape, and Pre-Columbian. And the way it goes, it seems that in terms of numbers, they simply seem to be increasing, in the output of books, articles, in the Dumbarton Oaks Papers, and many other things. So I have a feeling that Dumbarton Oaks is the major hub of production and steering of the fields of scholarship that are debated there.
JR: I know that one of Jan's concerns was to increase the awareness and mutual interaction of Byzantine studies and medieval studies more broadly. What is your impression of how Byzantine studies has changed over the last 20, 30 years vis-a-vis medieval studies broadly taken?
AA: Yeah, okay, let me give you an outline. The generation of my teachers, say, Mango, Dagron, and others were focused on — and Treadgold as well, I mean, even today, Kaldellis — are focused on the big picture. But most of the graduate students and PhD candidates that appear now, and I suspect that is also true in all three fields, or most of the scholarly fields, are focusing on particular aspects, sometimes detailed or not, even marginal, but say, you know, really, in terms of impact, very low, as also in terms of percentage of what part of the general field they cover. But still, they come up with much better and more, let me say, fine-grained pictures. It's like, you know, increasing the pixels in a digital picture. And this leads us now to new developments which may first of all change or overturn, if possible, or if need be, the conclusions of the earlier generation of scholarship. I cannot give you any examples right now, but there are lots if one has to put some of them down, There are really small studies or studies focused on our small segments of the Byzantine reality that speak differently than what you can find in say Ostrogorsky’s major history, or “Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome” by Mango. Oh! It seems that my memory unearthed an example. It is just a small but very significant issue that has to do with a stereotype in our historical knowledge of Early Byzantium. We all have read somewhere that Justinian closed the Academy/School of Philosophy of Athens in the year 529. How erroneous this understanding of history is, has been masterly demonstrated by E. Watts in an article published in the 2004 volume of the Journal of Roman Studies under the title “Justinian, Malalas and the end of Athenian Philosophical Teaching in 529 A.D.” So you see, the level of studies is in the process of being elevated and refined. That's my idea. Well, it's difficult to see the appeal of all three fields of the Dumbarton Oaks in the general level of a secondary and tertiary education.
But still, judging by the number of doctoral candidates that apply for summer schools, I can say that demand for our field is on the rise. You know, we started the DO summer school in the year 2000, but now, if you see there are a number of competing summer schools — not competing, I mean, we are the original summer school [laughing] — but there are a number of summer schools who will try to simply emulate or complement the DO- Gennadius ones. The one that comes close to us is the Bogazici one run by Niels Gaul, who is also a member of our editorial board in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. There is also another one in Dublin, and this was the one which started almost the same time as we did. There are a number of other ones, I mean one in Thessaloniki, and there is one on paleography in Vienna now. One week. There is another one in Romania, I have participated in this. And so on, so forth. But the material we provide, and the way we approach the whole thing in the Dumbarton Oaks and Gennadius Summer School is not only the original, it is the one that covers really substantial needs of the field. The thing is that we are talking about marginalization, and still the numbers tell a different story. I mean, as I said, our usual number of applications for the summer schools of DO or the Gennadius was between 28 and 38 or 23 and 38 for 10 to 12 spots. This year we have 47, and last year, for Dumbarton Oaks, we had 38. So, as you see, it’s a very strange image. It seems like the Palaiologan period, you know, in which the tiny Byzantine Empire underwent a quite inexplicable cultural artistic Renaissance. which eventually was continued by the Renaissance proper.
JR: Do you detect any increasing tendency for Byzantine to interact with Western medievalists throughout the period of your career?
AA: Yes, yes, yes. And the way it goes, eventually I may —I don't know if this is going to happen in my time — but eventually I may see a few things changing. I mean, not Byzantine studies, but you know Eastern Mediterranean studies, which might include the continuum between, say, late antiquity and post-Byzantine, Ottoman period incorporated into one. One of the students I had, this is something, to be honest, this is something that Mango had already pointed out and said that, you know, what we have in Byzantium is okay, I mean, knowing Greek is fine, but it's time to start considering what was happening in the surrounding areas. I mean, better to know Syriac or Armenian or Arabic, which was not part of our toolbox when we studied. Now, in my classes, I had a number of in my, in this last summer school, I had two or three students who take Armenian or Syriac or other languages of the periphery, and I know historians focus now in Byzantium and the East, in Iran, for example, or not only Byzantium and the later periods of early Ottoman and Byzantine Renaissance as well. I mean, Sharon Gerstel for example, has also started another trend, the one that has to do with the influence of the Western Europe on Byzantium after 1204. And there are lots of things. The funny thing is that part of this year’s summer school was a visit to a church close to Argos, Holy Trinity of Moerbeke. It was a church established and built, I think, by William Moerbeke, the famous humanist. And the funny thing is that there's an article about this Church by Guy Sanders, which I reproduced in part and to which I added one or two arguments on my own. I argued that this church is a token of a successful conclusion of the agreement of the Council of Lyons of 1274, of the union of the two churches. You have that little church in Argolis which doesn't look like anything Byzantine, in fact. It’s built by spolia from other ancient temples. And the Bishop was, you know, a Catholic and envoy of the Pope by the time, John [William] Moerbeke. He's very well known.
So it seems that there is much more material that may connect Europe to Byzantium and Byzantium to the East. And the connection to the East can be perennial, you know, I mean, starting from the late antique periods. But then the European one is also equally open to the interactions, to the further study of the interactions between Byzantium and Italy, say, for example, even– why not– England from the year 1204 onwards, or even earlier, even earlier? Let me take, for example, this volume we published with the DOML the Courtly Mediterranean Fables, Stephanites and Ichnelates. It is a text translated from Arabic in Palermo by some Byzantines who knew Byzantine, Latin, and Arabic. And the translator Eugenius of Palermo was also in communication with the emperor of Germany by that time. So you see, there's much more. And another thing, from my own experience, there is much material in southern Italy which hasn't been studied at all. We have a few publications by one or two French scholars, and then the material, you can find, the early Byzantine material or material that shows the interaction of, you know, Normans, local Italians, local Byzantines, up to the 11th, 12th century is thoroughly, no, totally outside the focus of major studies. So there’s much, you know, much which might be studied and researched. You know, the dividing line is not between [laughing] the Adriatic Sea, East or West, but I suspect, is, I think, the Atlantic and whatever lies east of the Atlantic.
VL: Thank you for explaining those trends to us. So our last question is, how would you describe Dumbarton Oaks’ role in the international context in Byzantine studies. And how has this changed over the years?
AA: Oh, no, it doesn't, it hasn't changed over the years. It's always the cutting edge of the research and production of a number of major works of Byzantine scholarship in general. And still continues to, the publications are a really major component, but also the help it offers through the fellowships to individual scholars, mostly from Europe, and other places, I guess, now, is instrumental to the promotion of Byzantine studies in general. And you don’t know the authority Dumbarton Oaks enjoys here in places like Greece or Italy or say, other places, and France as well. I don't know much about England, although I studied in England, but I have no major connections. But people think that whatever is produced by Dumbarton Oaks, I would say, especially in the field of texts, is something that is still direly needed. Editions, and if not editions, translations certainly of Byzantine texts is the major thing that people have serious need of. And Dumbarton Oaks, you know, toes the line.
JR: I'd like to add a question. Speaking as a librarian, I have the impression, and I sometimes say that we are the best library for Byzantine studies in the world. But of course, I'm sure this varies depending on your specialty. What is your sense of how Dumbarton Oaks compares to other centers like Paris and Vienna and Rome. And what are ways in which perhaps there are niches of fields of study that we don't cover as well, or that we don't collect as comprehensively? What has been your sense over the years?
AA: I think in terms of the number of books you can find in places like Paris, I guess you can find almost all the volumes you have in your DO bookshelves. The thing is that you don't find them in a single place. And the same holds true for places like England. I mean, when I started my dissertation, Mango told me, “ You know there is a book which you have to consult. But in order to find this book, you have to go to London, purchase a membership to that particular library, and then get the book. We don't have it in Oxford.” And I think you do have it, no, you have it for sure in Dumbarton Oaks. So you see, this is the major difference between Dumbarton Oaks and other places. Greece is not, you know, due to the financial crisis, a number of libraries now, I mean the university libraries are not up to date concerning journal subscriptions. So the only thing I would suggest is — is it possible to do it? — a more friendly approach to the TLG. I guess you have only one outlet.
JR: I'm happy to tell you that that situation has improved.
AA: Ah, excellent, excellent!
JR: So any of the public terminals now can work for the TLG.
AA: That was the only moot point, I would say, when I was back last year, was it? Two years? Yeah, last year I was there.
JR: Yes.
AA: So if this has improved, then the Dumbarton Oaks Library, then I would possibly say, no, the Dumbarton Oaks Library in my opinion is the top one. I can find things everywhere else, but still, not under the same roof, as simple as that.
JR: What about publications in modern Greek? I'm sure there must be a certain number of more obscure modern Greek publications that I simply am unaware of. Do you have the sense?
AA: There are 2 or 3 major publishers. Kanake is the first. Banias is the second. And then the National — Ethniko Idryma — the National Institution of Research, Ethniko Idrima Ereunon. These three are the major publishers in Byzantine topics, and then you have publications, you know, here and there. I mean, even the metropolis of a provincial city like Sparta, for example, or Larissa can publish something which is of interest to Byzantinists. But, well,most of what is published in — oh, there is a new journal, I don’t know if you know it, it’s the Analekta Stagon kai Meteoron, a scholarly peer-reviewed journal which focuses on publications that have to do with Meteora, the monasteries of Meteora. It's the recent, the only new one, the rest is available on the internet, I mean whatever is published by the University of Thessaloniki and the Center of Byzantine Studies. There’s not much you might be missing from Greece. There's three or four major publishers, Kanake, Banias, Zetros (Thessalonike), oh, and maybe also the University Studio Press (Thessaolonike again), but they usually publish translations.
JR: So I think I've asked all the questions I needed to. Viviana, did you want to ask anything else?
VL: No, I think you answered all your questions but is there anything else you wanted to add?
AA: Let me see. I have some notes here, but no, they are all related to the questions you sent. What I have to say in fact is that a major role in the development of Byzantine scholarship and the translation projects, whatever, was started with the reading groups established by Alice-Mary Talbot with the help of Laiou. If you can continue this tradition of Dumbarton Oaks, that will be something that will simply enhance whatever has been done.
JR: So I can tell you that the last couple of years, I've been organizing reading groups that we meet on Friday, but, unlike the ones that Alice-Mary Talbot ran, it so far is not formalized toward the production of something published. So that's something to think about for the future, I guess.
AA: You can end up producing translations, to say the least. The format was easy under Alice-Mary. You take a number of pages, you know, prepare them as best as you can for the next week, and that was that. And everyone, mostly improvised. The Byzantine Fellows were always [laughing] implicitly demanded to attend.
JR: This is part of the difference, I don't have Alice-Mary's clout [laughing], so it's more of a volunteer gathering, which has its advantages as well.
AA: Well, make it compulsory! [all laughing].
JR: Well, we'll have to talk to Nikos.
AA: Yeah, that would work. I mean, you see, you have in your publications. And I think I have mentioned that, yes, in the introduction to my book — I published the book of Leo of Catania with the Bollandistes, but I have mentioned the reading group of Dumbarton Oaks in the acknowledgments section.
JR: I have one small follow up question. My impression as a staff member at Dumbarton Oaks is that the cohort of Byzantinists, who are in residence all the time, has shrunk. Because I hear about people like yourself, like Kazhdan, and others. I have the impression there was a somewhat larger community of permanent Byzantinist staff of a fairly senior rank.
AA: Yes, you're right, but these were, you know, the result of the extraordinary circumstances. I mean, Kazhdan was practically extracted from, you know, the Soviet Union by the time. And lots of people advocated his adoption. Lots of famous Byzantinists, especially Dagron, Mango, and Robert Browning. So Dumbarton Oaks made the concession, which was not institutional, in fact, I think, and then you had some others who were related as former directors of studies, former members of the faculty, which was dismantled sometime, you know. But they continued holding their offices. And that was the only reason that you had a number of scholars in residence. And Irfan Shahîd was the last one who was in a permanent relationship in the frame of producing the series of books about Arabs and Byzantium. But yes, if you don't have that, uncanonical, I would say, affiliation with Dumbarton Oaks, then there's got to be some other official scheme of appointments, and I cannot see any reason how or any way as to how you can establish something like that. Who else? No, I mean, it was mostly Kazhdan and two or three other people who were around in the nineties. Then with the death of Kazhdan and the death of Irfan Shahîd, I think these kinds of scholars in residence vanished.
JR: So besides yourself, it was Kazhdan, and Shahid and Alice-Mary, of course, as Director, were there any other sort of permanent or semi-permanent Byzantinists during that period living there or nearby?
AA: Only those who worked in the frame of the Hagiography Project, was Stephanos Efthymiadis, for the one year after I left for Columbia, and then was also Claudia Ludwig
Another one who worked for the Hagiography project was Lee Sherry, and stayed for one more year after I left for Columbia, But then Lee didn't pursue an academic career. He's, I think he's in secondary education now. Who else? I mean, there were, I don’t remember their names. There was also Frances Kianka, who was basically employed with the editions, the Dumbarton Oaks editions, as a proofreader, I think, but she was also a Byzantine scholar. And then there are some other people who live in Washington but were mostly associated with DO through the reading groups. As I said, Elizabeth Fisher, Stamatina McGrath, the editor of the Life of Saint Basil the Younger. I forget his name now. He's the husband of Elizabeth Fisher, I think, or he used to be.
JR: Denis Sullivan.
AA: Denis Sullivan, yes.
JR: This is another thing that has changed, is the community of local Byzantinists has shrunk or aged.
AA: Yes, they were always present in the reading groups, at least. That was a great experience for them, or an opportunity for them to be together with Byzantinists and also contribute. But you see, I mean the Life of Saint Basil the Younger is signed by Alice-Mary Talbot, Stamatina McGrath, and Sullivan, Denis Sullivan. So, you see, this worked. I mean, the way it worked in the nineties is the continuation of the circle of scholars the Dutch philologist created around him.
JR: Westerink?
AA: Westerink, yes, Westerink. So that generation was eventually associated with Dumbarton Oaks, I mean, among other people, John Duffy also was a member of the circle of Westerink, and then Dumbarton Oaks as well.
JR: Who were the other scholars who were students, or in the circle of Westerink?
AA: Westerink, I think, was George Dennis, without being sure, absolutely Elizabeth Fisher, John Duffy, and two or three more names. Those who are interested in Psellos especially in the States. So, that was the first nucleus of Byzantine scholarship, especially a philological one. Then the people usually stayed in, most of them, or moved to Washington and they were always happy to be around Dumbarton Oaks, that’s all. Now, I don't know if there are other people around. I mean my only student from Columbia, Susan Wessel, is a professor at the Catholic, but I don't know if she ever crosses the threshold of Dumbarton Oaks.
JR: No, I don't think so. I don't think she comes.
AA: And she’s a Washingtonian.
JR: Well, thank you so much, for these very full answers to all this. It's very interesting to hear.
AA: Oh, you’re most welcome. I really enjoyed that. For me it’s a lifetime, it’s still continuous [laughing]. A lifetime in DO scholarship, and it still continues, as I said.