All 2020 courses for the Dan Slușanschi School for Classical and Oriental Languages are moving online!
Old Slavonic Ancient Greek
Beginners – July 6-17 Beginners – July 13-24
Latin Lower intermediate – July 27-August 7
Beginners – July 13-24, 2020 Intermediate – July 13-24
Lower intermediate – July 27- August 7 Upper intermediate – July 27-August 7
. Advanced – July 20-July 31
The Institute of Ecumenical Research, Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu is pleased to organize online courses in Old Slavonic, Latin and, respectively, Ancient Greek for the summer of 2020. The instruction language for each course is English. Each course comprises of 10 days of language training, with an overall training of 60 hours/course. The aim of the course is to provide enough practice as to ensure a functional acquisition of the taught languages. You can enrol for one course alone or for two consecutive courses. Applications consisting of a cover letter and a CV should be sent to ccesiofh@gmail.com by June 1, 2020.The course fee is 150 Euro. Enrolments are open until June 1. For further information please refer to ccesiofh@gmail.com.
The Dan Slușanschi School for Classical and Oriental Languages was launched in 2019 as an initiative within the Institute for Ecumenical Research. The late Dr. Slusanschi was a pre-eminent 20th century Romanian classicist and specialist in Indo-European linguistics who made tremendous contributions in the fields of Ancient Greek, Latin/Medieval Latin and Persian. The School is named in his honor as the Institute seeks to continue his life-long passion for advancing philological studies across academic disciplines.
Old Slavonic Dan Slușanschi (1943-2008)
Beginners – July 6-17, 2020: 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. A thorough overview of Slavonic morphology (noun declension, adjectives, pronouns, verb conjugation), as well as an introduction to Slavonic syntax will be offered throughout 10 course days including 6 hours of daily training for a total of 60 classroom hours. The daily lessons will combine theoretical with practical elements in the classes. Lectures on the history of the Slavic Bible will be offered in some of the afternoons. By the end of the course students should be familiarised with the most important aspects of Slavonic morphology and syntax.
Latin
Beginners – July 13-24, 2020: the course is designed for absolute beginners. Noun and adjective declension, verb conjugation on the present verbal stem, as well as an introduction to the syntactic values of the cases and the fundamental vocabulary of classical Latin will be covered throughout 10 course days including 6 hours of daily training for a total of 60 classroom hours. The 6 hours of daily training will combine theoretical with practical classes and the students will have the chance to read and understand their first lines from Caesar, Sallust or the Vulgate. By the end of the course students should be able to read and understand simple Latin texts and phrases.
Lower intermediate – July 27-August 7, 2020: the course is designed for those who master noun and adjective declension and verb conjugation on the present verbal stem. The course will introduce the students in Latin subjunctive, verb conjugation on the perfect verbal stem, participial and infinitival clauses, clauses introduced by ut and cum, as well as Latin pronouns throughout 10 course days including 6 hours of daily training for a total of 60 classroom hours. Theoretical and practical classes will be combined, and students will have the chance to read and understand fragments by Caesar, Sallust, Cicero or from the Vulgate. By the end of the course students should be able to tackle simple texts with multiple clauses.
Ancient Greek
Beginners – July 13-24, 2020: 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 10 course days including 6 hours of daily training for a total of 60 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.
Lower intermediate – July 27-August 7, 2020: 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 throughout 10 course days including 6 hours of daily training for a total of 60 classroom hours.. Short texts by Menander, Longus, Dio Cassius, Esopus or Plutarch 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 13-24, 2020: 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 throughout 10 course days including 6 hours of daily training for a total of 60 classroom hours. Vocabulary will be further built upon by reading accessible texts by Plato, Aesop, Xenophon, Lucian and the Gospels. By the end of the course students should be able to read Greek texts of mild difficulty.
Upper intermediate – July 27-August 7, 2020: the course is designed for those who master Greek verb conjugation in perfect and future tenses, as well as in subjunctive, personal and relative pronouns, relative and conditional clauses in Greek 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, the pluperfect tense, throughout 10 course days including 6 hours of daily training for a total of 60 classroom hours. 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 relative difficulty.
Advanced – July 20-July 31, 2020: the course is designed for those who have functionally assimilated Greek morphology and syntax and have a rich, consolidated Greek vocabulary (i.e. to the level of what methods like Reading Greek or Hermaion-Discovering Greek Step by Step cover in terms of morphology, syntax and vocabulary). In the first week of the course students will read through the sixth book of Homer’s Odyssey, while in the second week they will read through a historical and an oratorical text (most probably by Xenophon, Isocrates or Demosthenes) . 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. By the end of the course students should be able to read Greek texts from various genres with increased ease.
Meet Our Instructors
Aleksandr Sizikov is head of the Biblical Department of St. Petersburg State University. He graduated from St. Petersburg State University in 1998 with a thesis on the Letter of Peter III of Antioch about azymon in the Slavic tradition. In 1999-2000 he studied Hebrew and Bible translation at Free University of Amsterdam. From 2000 and up to 2008 he worked on the vernacular Bible translations of the Russian Bible society (in Ossetic, Bashkir, Burjat, Kryashen, Chuvash projects). In 2005 he started teaching within the Biblical Department of St. Petersburg State University. He has earned his PhD in 2008 with a paper on the past tenses in the Old Russian translation of “The Life of Andrew the Fool”. His academic interests are Slavonic Studies, with focus on grammar and the Slavonic verb, and Biblical Studies, where he has a particular interest in the work of 2nd Century BCE Hellenistic Jewish scribe Ben Sirah.
Antoaneta Sabau 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 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.
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.
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 degree in Medieval Studies from Central European University, Budapest. His PhD dissertation title: “Rhetoric, Exegesis and Florilegic Structure in Philagathos of Cerami: An Investigation of the Homilies and of the Allegorical Exegesis of Heliodorus’ Aethiopika,” (forthcoming in the Bibliothèque de Byzantion at Peeters, Leuven). 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.
Octavian Gordon holds a PhD in Classical Studies, with a thesis in Philology on Lactantius’ De mortibus persecutorum (2007, under the supervision of Prof. Dan Slușanschi). He currently teaches Old Greek and Latin at the University of Bucharest. He has been a scholarship holder and fellow for PhD and postdoctoral research of several European Universities, such as Fribourg (scholarship holder of the Swiss Confederation, under the supervision of Prof. Jacques Schamp), Berlin (both Freie Universität and von Humboldt), Salonica, Münster (under the supervision of Professor Georgios Makris) and Bucharest. As a fellow of the New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study in Bucharest, he participated in the translation into Romanian of the Septuagint and in other translation projects, especially from the biblical and byzantine literature. He has attended more than 40 scientific conferences and is a member of many academic organizations. He is a National Correspondent for Romania and member in the Scientific Council of the International Association of Patristic Studies. He was appointed General Director of the National Library of Romania from June 2016 to May 2017.
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.
Dan 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.