Dan Slusanschi School for Classical and Oriental Languages

Fall 2020 – Spring 2021 Courses

Aici găsiți informații în limba română.

Dan Slusanschi School for Classical and Oriental Languages organizes courses for Old Slavonic, Biblical Hebrew, Latin and Classical Greek. Each course consists of 2 hours of weekly meetings for 20 weeks (altogether 40 class hours) of online learning. Courses will begin late October 2020 through mid-April 2021, with a break for Christmas/New Year. The exact hour and day for the weekly meeting of each course will be decided together with the instructor shortly after the registration deadline, so that the timetable may accommodate all registrants. The instruction language for the courses is English.

For registrations, please send a cover letter and a CV to ccesiofh@gmail.com.

Registration deadline: October 16.

The fee for each of the language courses is 150 Euros (+ bank transfer fees).

Payment deadline: October 23.

Biblical Hebrew

Beginners

The course is designed for beginners, starting with reading and writing in Hebrew. The 20 courses of 2 hours weekly will introduce the students to the article, prepositions, nouns, adjectives, regular verbs and pronouns, so that one can make use of the original Old Testament text (especially the easiest fragments in prose from the Pentateuch and the historical books). The fundamental vocabulary (cca 300 words) of the Hebrew language will be mastered. The student is encouraged to purchase a printed edition of the Hebrew Bible (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) to read the selected texts in their own context.

Old Slavonic

Beginners

The course is meant for beginners who have no previous knowledge of this language. The introductory lessons will introduce them to the history of the language, context, and the earliest available sources. We will further study the scripts, phonetics, and phonetic alternations. The 20 weeks and 40 classes are meant to provide an overview of declensions and conjugations’ morphology, while the basic syntax structures are studied through reading texts. The study is based on a combination of the available textbooks that will be lightly adapted for beginners. Towards the end of the course, students should be equipped to read short excerpts from the Bible and hagiography.

Latin

Beginners

The present course is designed for beginners, though previous knowledge of the language is welcomed. It is based on the direct method of Hans Orberg, developed in his textbook – Familia Romana. The direct method implies that Latin will be the language used at the course almost exclusively, ensuring a complete immersion in the Latin language and realities. The purpose of the lessons is to cover the very basic level of Latin – the five declinations of the Latin noun and pronoun and indicative and imperative of the verb in the present tense. The lessons will also cover: singular and plural number; interrogative particles; enclitic particles; present indicative; personal, interrogative, demonstrative and relative pronouns;  interrogative sentences; imperative; prepositions; locative; active and passive voice; declinations; the roman calendar; modal verbs etc.

Intermediate

The course is designed for those who master noun and adjective declension, the indicative tenses of the verb, and who have introductory notions for the pronoun, infinitival clauses and participial clauses. The course will develop further on the uses of the pronoun, the conjunctive, the roles of the cases in Latin and also into different types of clauses, including the participial clauses and clauses introduced by ut and cum. Hans Orberg’s Familia Romana will constitute the basic textbook for the course, but participants will also have the chance to work on original classical texts, as well as on later pieces of Latin literature. The course also aims to consolidate and build a basic, fundamental, vocabulary for the realities of the Roman world.

Advanced – Medieval Latin

The course is designed for learners with an upper-intermediate to advanced knowledge of Classical Latin. Medieval Latin is not an independent language, as often misinterpreted, but remains Latin, learned from late classical grammars, with variations in orthography, an expanded vocabulary to express new needs and adapt to a changed environment, and errors introduced in morphology by medieval writers on account of their own training and influence from vernacular languages. Our aim is to become familiar with these divergences from Classical Latin during the Middle Ages, and thus develop a deeper understanding of the Latin language, which retained its identity. The course consists of a detailed introduction with examples from literary texts followed by the study of original texts which illustrate significant aspects of the medieval world, namely education, philosophy, religion, language, and literature.”

Ancient Greek

Beginners

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 throughout 20 weekly meetings  for a total of 40 classroom hours. Short and simple sentences by Menander, Esopus or Xenophon 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.

Intermediate

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, 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 the from the Gospels. By the end of the course students should be able to read Greek texts of mild difficulty.

Advanced

The long-term class for advanced ancient Greek learners will comprise of a thorough reading of two complete text units: Homer’s Iliad Book 6 and Plato’s Critias. The students will be shortly introduced into the Homeric apparatus: metrics, text transmission, the Homeric question. And then, verse by verse, three of the most vibrant scenes of the European literature will be visited: a battle without gods around, a ritualized bond of friendship and a dramatic scene of connubial love. We shall focus on the very means Homer uses to construct this edifice: prosodic, syntactic, lexical. With Critias we shall read the original text that launched an everlasting and obsessive phantasm of the European culture: Atlantis. And by so doing we will find out what a great writer Plato is: rhetorical means and style will get our total attention and interest.

Meet our team

Alex Mihăilă is associate professor for Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Bucharest. He is part of a translating team of the Old Testament (New Europe College and Humanitas Publishing House) and the New Testament (Vatopedi Monastery) and published in co-authorship a Biblical Hebrew-Romanian dictionary (2017) and a Hebrew grammar for beginners in Romanian (2020). He earned his PhD in Theology at the University of Iasi (Romania), with a scholarship of EKD in Erlangen and participation in archaeological diggings in Israel. His main interest is the history of the biblical Israel.

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.

Krasimir Ivanov studied in the National high school for ancient languages and cultures “St. Constantine Cyrile the Philosopher” in Sofia, Bulgaria. He graduated his BA studies in classical philology at Sofia University in 2016. He has studied for two years in Academia Vivarium Novum in Rome, Italy. Krasimir is currently a member of the Oxford Latinitas Project. He teaches in the same high school he has graduated and is pursuing his MA degree on ancient history at Sofia University. His main research interests are related to the Roman Republic, related to which he is looking into the reasons that changed Roman society from a small Res publica to the greatest empire in the Mediterranean area.

Antoaneta Sabău is a research fellow of the Institute of Ecumenical Research, Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu. She has studied classical philology at the University of Bucharest and Medieval Studies at Central European University, Budapest. She has had research stays at Centre Sevres (Paris), University College Dublin, and Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, Toronto and has pursued training in Latin palaeography with an Andrew W. Mellon scholarship for the Diploma Program in Manuscript Studies (at the American Academy in Rome and the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies, Toronto). She holds a PIMS Certificate of Proficiency in Medieval Latin. She has been studying the Latin textual tradition of the Exercitia Spiritualia by Ignatius of Loyola, has been involved in various translation projects and is currently working on Johannes Scotus Eriugena’s translations of Greek fathers. She is preparing the first Romanian translations of Eriugena’s Periphyseon and De praedestinatione. Antoaneta is also a co-founder of the Dan Slusanschi School for Classical and Oriental Languages.

Michail Konstantinou-Rizos is a tutor of Classical, Byzantine and Modern Greek and of Classical and Medieval Latin. He holds a PhD in Byzantine studies from Royal Holloway, University of London, and has recently produced a critical edition of Prochoros Cydones’ (ca. 1330-1369/71) Greek translation of Thomas Aquinas’ Quaestiones disputatae de potentia and Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis, to be published by the Corpus Christianorum – Series Graeca, Thomas de Aquino Byzantinus (Brepols: Turnhout). He also holds a MA in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies from the University of London and a BA in History and Archaeology from the University of Athens. He has participated in a number of research projects transcribing and editing Byzantine and post-Byzantine texts from manuscripts. Since 2016, he is a member of the International Research Project Thomas de Aquino Byzantinus, run by the University of Patras and the University of London.

Mircea Gratian Dulus graduated from Classical Philology and History and Archaeology. He holds an MA in Ancient Christianity at the University of Naples L’ ‘Orientale’ and a master’s degree in Medieval Studies from Central European University, Budapest. His PhD dissertation entitled “Rhetoric, Exegesis and Florilegic Structure in Philagathos of Cerami: An Investigation of the Homilies and of the Allegorical Exegesis of Heliodorus’ Aethiopika,” is in preparation for publication in the LAHR book series at Peeters, Leuven (editor in chief Prof. dr. Hagit Amirav). He has experience with translating Greek texts into English. Recently, he has contributed English translations, commentaries and notes (55 pages) to a new major publication project, Byzantine Texts on Art and Aesthetics, edited by Foteini Spingou (University of Edinburgh) and Charles Barber (Princeton University) and published by the Cambridge University Press. Mircea has been also trained in Greek Palaeography, first at Central European University with Prof. Niels Gaul, then at the Kapodistrian University of Athens where he was an Erasmus student, and thereafter at the Lincoln College Summer School of Greek Palaeography. At present, he is a postdoc fellow at the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB).

Mihail Mitrea, a native of Sibiu, is a researcher at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy. He earned a PhD in Classics at the University of Edinburgh (2018) and holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Medieval/Byzantine Studies from the Central European University (2011), a BA in Theology from the ‘1 Decembrie 1918’ University, Alba-Iulia (2009), and a BA in Classical Philology from the Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca (2008). He recently completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellowship at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University (2018–2020), and has held several fellowships awarded by prestigious research institutions, including Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection of Washington D.C., Trustees for Harvard University (2016–2017) and the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation (2014–2015). His research interests focus on late-Byzantine literature, hagiography, epistolography, theology, as well as Greek palaeography, and textual criticism. For more details on his research and publications, visit his profile on academia.edu.

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.

Florin George Calian studied Classics and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest. He holds a PhD on Plato’s philosophy from Central European University. He has also a MA in Medieval Studies (CEU, Budapest), and one in Greek and Roman Archeology (University of Bucharest). He had the opportunity through several scholarships to study and conduct research at the Departement für Philosophie of Université Fribourg (Switzerland), Trinity College (University of Oxford), Plato Center (Trinity College Dublin), Tübinger Stift (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen), New Europe College (Bucharest), Robarts Library (Toronto), Department of Incunabula, Old and Precious Books, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Wien). He is currently a research fellow of the Institute of Ecumenical Research, Philosophy and Religious Studies Unit. He is a co-founder of the Dan Slusanschi School for Classical and Oriental Languages.

Daniel Koski 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. He is a full-time staff member of the Institute for Ecumenical Research, assisting with English-language communications and various administrative tasks. A native of the United States, he has lived in the Holy Land and Europe in recent years, specialising in non-profit and institutional administrative development and support.