2022 Courses

Cursuri în limba română aici

The Dan Slușanschi School for Classical & Oriental Languages is pleased to offer a new intensive session of summer courses from May to August 2022.

Courses are being offered in the following language disciplines: Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew and Old Slavonic. (Coptic will be offered again in Autumn 2022.) The courses are held in up to five proficiency levels, from Beginners to Advanced. Each class is comprised of 40 hours of online videoconferencing instructional time over 10 sessions in a two week period. Courses will be conducted in English unless otherwise mentioned.

For registration for any of the courses, please send a cover letter and a CV to dsscol@ecum.ro. The fee for each of the language courses is 190 Euros (+ bank transfer fees).

Registration deadline: May 11.

Course Information

Latin

Beginners: June 20 – July 1

Betina Yaneva

The Latin course for the beginner level will be held in Latin from the very beginning, as to facilitate the immersion in the language as in a similar modern language intensive course, as well as to encourage the participation of students who are not that confident in their English skills. The textbook that will be used in all of the Latin courses will be Familia Romana. The additional work sheets and other documents provided will be in English. In the duration of the two weeks of this program the students will get familiar with the basic structure of the Latin sentence, get to know and use the present tense and the first and second declination. The classes of the following two levels of the Latin courses are designed in such a manner that the students, who finish with the lower level could immediately transition to the next one.

Lower Intermediate: July 4 – 15

George Mitov

The Latin course is designed for students who have already gone through the beginner’s course which includes the first three declensions of nouns and adjectives, the fourth conjugations of the Latin verb, as well as some of the irregular verbs, in present tense indicative and imperative mood, and most of the pronouns. The intermediate course continues with past base of the verb, covering all the verb forms in Indicativus, Imperativus, Infinitivus, Participium. Students will be familiarized with extensive vocabulary, fixed expressions, compound verbs, synonymous ways of expressing different grammatical and stylistic structures. After this course, some easier original texts will be accessible with the help of the dictionary.

The course will be held 5 days per week, for two weeks, with 4 instruction hours per day, for a total of 40 course hours. The final hours of the course will be decided together with all participants and the instructor, once the enrolment period is over, so that it may accommodate all participants.

Upper intermediate: July 18 – 29

Betina Ianeva

The highest grade course this year is going to ensure the free use of basic Latin vocabulary and grammar, presenting more complex syntax structures. The students will be able to start gradually increasing the difficulty of text they read and understand with little efford.

Ancient Greek

Beginners: May 16 – 27
one week Andra Jugănaru

The course is designed for absolute beginners, though a pre-existing knowledge of the alphabet is strongly encouraged, in order to best absorb the curriculum material at the swiftest possible rate. Greek accent, noun and adjective declension, verb conjugation for indicative present, as well as an introduction to the syntactic values of the cases and the fundamental vocabulary of ancient Greek will be covered. Short and simple sentences by Menander, Esopus, Xenophon, and Strabo will be read during the course, so that by the end of the course students should be able to tackle simple sentences or phrases in Greek.

The course will be held 5 days a week, for two weeks, with 4 instruction hours per day, for a total of 40 course hours. The final hours of the course will be decided together with all participants and the instructor, once the enrolment period is over, so that it may accommodate all participants.

Lower Intermediate: June 6 – 17
Andra Jugănaru

The course is designed for those who master Greek accentuation, noun and adjective declension and verb conjugation in indicative present and a basic Greek vocabulary. The course will introduce students to Greek verb conjugation in indicative imperfect and the aorist, irregular verbs, degrees of comparison of the adjective, infinitive and participle aorist, as well as syntactic elements. Short texts by Menander, Longus, Dio Cassius, Esopus, Plutarch, or the Gospels will be read during the course, so that by the end of the course students should be able to tackle simple texts in Greek.

Intermediate: July 18 – 29
Cristian Ioan Dumitru

The course is designed for those who master Greek verb conjugation in indicative imperfect and the aorist, degrees of comparison of the adjective, infinitive, and participle aorist, as well as participial and infinitive clauses. The course will introduce students to perfect and future tenses, personal pronouns, possessive adjectives, relative pronouns and relative clauses, the conditional clause, and the subjunctive mood of the verb. Vocabulary will be further built upon by reading accessible texts by Plato, Aesop, Xenophon, Lucian, and fragments from the Gospels. By the end of the course, students should be able to read Greek texts of mild difficulty. The course will be held 5 days a week, for two weeks, with 4 instruction hours per day, for a total of 40-course hours. The final hours of the course will be decided together with all participants and the instructor, once the enrolment period is over, so that it may accommodate all participants.

Upper Intermediate: August 1 – 12

one week Cristian Ioan Dumitru / one week Andra Jugănaru

The course is designed for those who master Greek verb conjugation in perfect and future tenses, as well personal and relative pronouns, relative and conditional clauses and have a consistent knowledge of Greek fundamental vocabulary. The course will consolidate existing notions of Greek grammar and will also introduce students to irregular verbs, especially irregular forms of the perfect and the aorist, the optative and imperative mood of the verb, and the pluperfect tense. Various clauses in Greek syntax and vocabulary will be further introduced by reading texts by Plato, Aesop, Lucian and Strabo. By the end of the course students should be able to read Greek texts of medium difficulty.

Advanced: June 20 – July 1 CANCELED!!!

Stefan Colceriu

Reading: Odyssey Book 9; Iliad Book 24.

The intensive class for advanced ancient Greek learners will comprise of a thorough reading of two complete text units: Homer’s Odyssey Book 9 and Iliad Book 24. The students will be shortly introduced into the Homeric apparatus: metrics, text transmission, the Homeric question. And then, verse by verse, several of the most vibrant scenes of the European literature will be visited, that is a series of confrontations with our innermost fears (Lotus Eaters, Cyconians and ovbviously the Cyclops) and our most profound emotions (a grieved father retrieves the body of his dead son from his terrible enemy). We shall focus on the very means Homer uses to construct this edifice: prosodic, syntactic, lexical. Each of the ten course days will comprise of 4 hours of reading together, focusing on the lexical (etymologies, lexical families etc) and syntactical complexities of the texts, as well as to poetic syntax, style, and rhetoric. Participants are expected to dedicate 2 hours of daily individual work in preparing the fragments that would be discussed the following course day.

Biblical Hebrew

Beginners: June 13 – 24

Cristinel Iatan

In fourteen daily meetings, four hours per day, participants will learn to write and read in Biblical Hebrew, to understand the Semitic system of thinking through the Hebrew language, to read simple Hebrew texts and how to use the dictionary, to recognize and understand the basic grammar paradigms, and accumulate a lexic of about 300 words.

Old Slavonic

Beginners: June 27 – July 8

Mihail-George Hancu

This intensive course, spanning 40 hours over 2 weeks (i.e. 4 hours per day, from Monday to Friday), is intended for beginners who have no previous knowledge of this language. The opening lesson will introduce them to the history of the language, the context of its creation, the earliest available sources, and the Slavonic Cyrillic script. These classes are meant to provide an overview of phonetics and morphology, while the most frequent syntactical structures are studied through reading texts. By the end of the course, students should be equipped to read short excerpts from the Bible and hagiography and to make good use of the resources which are currently available to students of Old Slavonic.

Intermediate: July 11 – 22

Mihail-George Hancu

This course is designed for those who are familiar with the fundamentals of Old Slavonic and wish to become accustomed to the particularities of the five main Slavonic recensions: Czecho-Moravian, Serbo-Croatian, Middle Bulgarian, Russo-Ukrainian and Romanian. This intensive course, spanning 40 hours over 2 weeks (i.e. 4 hours per day, from Monday to Friday), will have two intertwined components: first of all, it will provide a description of the changes that took place in each recension compared to Old Slavonic, with great attention being given to phonetics and morphology, so as to aid the students to adapt to the relative lack of dedicated dictionaries for each variety of Church Slavonic and to be make use of classical Old Slavonic dictionaries in their endeavours.

On the other hand, this theoretical element will be balanced out by a practical side, as the students will be given the chance to work on a selection of texts from each recension, which will allow them to apply their newly acquired skills and to consolidate their understanding of Old Slavonic. While some of these texts will be from the various transcriptions of religious texts (which allow for better parallels), many will be from medieval historical sources and documents, which better illustrate some of the local traits of the recensions. Finally, the students will also be provided with the occasion to read some of these texts in manuscript form by means of digital copies and scans, which will serve as a minor introduction to palaeography.

Instructors

Latin

Betina Yaneva studied Classics in Sofia University, during her studies and after graduating, she taught Ancient Greek and Latin at the National Highschool for Ancient Languages and Cultures in Sofia. During her free time in the summer for the past couple of years she has been teaching Latin and poetry during the Summer schools for ancient languages in Bulgaria.

Georgi Mitov is a postgraduate student at KU Leuven (Belgium). In 2015 he graduated from the National high school for ancient languages and cultures “St. Constantine Cyril the Philosopher” (Sofia, Bulgaria). He holds a BA in History (Mediaeval History) from Sofia University, and a MA in Paleoslavic studies from the same university. Currently, he is pursuing his MRes in Theology and Religious studies at KU Leuven. Georgi specialised in Classical philology at Accademia ‘Vivarium Novum’ (Frascati-Roma, Italy, 2016-2017), and subsequently in Mediaeval history and Byzantine theology at Durham University (UK, 2019-2020). Since 2017 he has been teaching Latin as a part-time teacher at several high schools in Sofia and also during Scholae aestivae linguarum antiquarum in Bulgaria habitae. Between 2019 and 2021 Georgi worked as a junior researcher at the Institute of Balkan Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His main research interest is in the field of Byzantine and Paleoslavic Studies, as well as Greek Patristics and Early Christian Studies.

Ancient Greek

Andra Jugănaru graduated bachelor and master studies in History and Computer Sciences at the University of Bucharest as well as a master program in Medieval Studies at Central European University in Budapest. At CEU she defended her PhD dissertation titled “Family Double Monasteries in the Fourth and the Fifth Century. An Inquiry into the Theological Roots, Social Context and Early Evolution of an Old Practice” under the supervision of †Marianne Sághy and István Perczel. Now, as a postdoctoral researcher at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, she is studying the Cappadocian Fathers’ letter collections using the network theory. She has benefitted from several scholarships, research fellowships and summer schools in Europe (Lyon, Rome, Vienna, Paris, Louvain la Neuve, Dresden, Lund) and at Dumbarton Oaks. She is a member of the Patristic Committee and she is working at the translation of Gregory of Nyssa’s letters to Romanian.

Cristian Ioan Dumitru is a Ph.D. candidate in Byzantine Studies at the University of Bucharest. He holds a double BA in Orthodox Theology (2019) and Classics (2020), as well as a MA in Church History (2021), and has taken part in numerous national and international Ancient and Byzantine Greek summer schools. He is mainly interested in secular culture and theological controversies in Byzantium and has worked on several texts of Photius of Constantinople. His Ph.D. research project entails the textual editing and commentary of three polemical works of the Byzantine author Joseph Bryennios.

Stefan Colceriu studied Classics and is a researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. As a Ph.D. student he benefitted from the scholarship of the Swiss Confederation and that of the New Europe College, Institute of Advanced Study (NEC Bucharest). During his stays at the University of Leuven, Fribourg, Leiden and Zürich he specialized in late ancient thought and early Christianity. He was a member of the Septuagint translation project at New Europe College, Bucharest, a co-founder of the first non-confessional M.A. program of Religious Studies at the University of Bucharest, and the organizer of the focus groups for Biblical Hebrew and Coptic at NEC. Colceriu teaches Ancient Greek, Greek history and civilization, and history of Romanian at the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Bucharest. Stefan is highly interested in Homer, archaic/classical Greek poetry, and Thucydides.

Biblical Hebrew

Cristinel Iatan (Ph.D. in Theology), studied Theology at Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Bucharest. He also studied Hebrew, Aramaic and Biblical Archaeology at École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem. He is now Assistant Professor of Old Testament Studies and Biblical Hebrew Language at Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Bucharest and member of the translator’s team of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at New Europe College and Humanitas Publishing House. He also published in co-authorship a Biblical Hebrew-Romanian dictionary (2017) and a Hebrew Grammar for Beginners in Romanian language (2020). He earned his PhD in Theology at the University of Iasi (Romania), and participated in visiting and digging around all Israel with École Biblique during 2004-2005. He is interested in Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, Hebrew, Aramaic and Old Koine Greek, Biblical Archaeology, Topography of Jerusalem, Second Temple Period, Early Judaism, Qumran, Biblical Geography and ANE Studies.

Old Slavonic

Mihail-George Hâncu is a Scientific Researcher at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy. He defended his PhD thesis in Philology in 2018, (University of Bucharest/University of Hamburg) with the thesis The Terminology of Ancient Greek Cosmogonies, published in 2019. He has a BA in Classical Philology (2011), a BA in Serbian and Romanian Philology (2019), an MA in Classical Philology (2013), and an MA in Balkan Cultural Studies (2015). As he became a researcher at the Institute for South-East European Studies in September 2015, he expanded his area of research to South Slavic languages, in particular Serbian and Bulgarian. He currently teaches Old Church Slavonic at the “Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics and Serbian at the Institute for South-East European Studies. Following the completion of his first project at the Institute for South-East European Studies (The Origins and Meaning of the Image of Military Saints Fighting Against a Dragon), he started a new project in 2020, “The Historical Palaea in the Byzantine-Slav Space”, in which he will be comparing the Romanian tradition of this apocryphal text with the South Slavic tradition. He has published various articles (in Romanian, English, Serbian and Bulgarian) on subjects concerning Slavic philology.

Anne Herrmann is an administrative staff member of the Dan Slușanschi School for Classical and Oriental Languages, handling course registrations, communication with program participants, and marketing concerns.
She studied art and media pedagogics and art and media management in Germany. She worked for different cultural organisations in Germany and other countries in Europe as a freelancer.

She will move to Sibiu in Autmn 2022.

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