SPBS Chair calls for King's College rethink

The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies expresses its extreme concern at the proposals for the dispersal of the Byzantine and Modern Greek Department at King’s College.

Read SPBS letter

***JOB*** Byzantine History, Harvard University

The Department of History announces an open-rank search for a tenure-track faculty member or a tenured professor in the field of Byzantine history, specializing in the history of Byzantine civilization from 400 to 1461. The candidate’s research and teaching must be broadly gauged so as to enrich the work of Harvard’s wider community of scholars, notably Byzantinists, medievalists, and classicists within and beyond the Department of History, and including Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Teaching duties will include courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels; a strong record of doctoral advising will be welcome. Applicants should submit a letter of application, including brief statements of current and future research and of teaching philosophy, and a curriculum vitae with a complete bibliography, to:

Byzantine History Search Committee
c/o Janet Hatch
Department of History
Harvard University
201 Robinson Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138.

The deadline for receipt of applications is May 1, 2010. Harvard is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Applications from women and members of minority groups are strongly encouraged.

[Posted on BEDLAM: Byzantine Email Distribution List and Mailings.]

2010 Greek Summer School at Dumbarton Oaks

June 7 – July 2, 2010
Dumbarton Oaks will again offer an intensive four-week course in medieval Greek and paleography in the early summer of 2010. A limited number of places will be available for students from North America and Europe.
Course Offerings
The principal course will be a daily 1 ½ hour session devoted to the translation of sample Byzantine texts. Each week texts will be selected from a different genre, e.g., historiography, hagiography, poetry, and epistolography. Two afternoons a week hour-long sessions on paleography will be held. In addition each student will receive a minimum of one hour per week of individual tutorial. Students will also have the opportunity to view facsimiles of manuscripts in the Dumbarton Oaks Rare Books Collection, as well as original manuscripts in the Byzantine
Collection. Thus approximately eleven hours per week will be devoted to formal classroom instruction. It is anticipated that students will require the remaining hours of the week to prepare their assignments. If they should have extra time, they may conduct personal research in the Dumbarton Oaks library.
Faculty
Stratis Papaioannou, Brown University/Dumbarton Oaks; Alice-Mary Talbot, Dumbarton Oaks
Accommodation and Costs
No tuition fees will be charged. Successful candidates from outside the Washington area will be provided with housing in the guesthouse at no cost and lunch on weekdays. Local area students will not be offered accommodation, but will receive free lunch on weekdays. Students are expected to cover their own transportation expenses.
Requirements for Admission
Applicants must be graduate students in a field of Byzantine studies (or advanced undergraduates with a strong background in Greek) at a North American or European university. Two years of college level ancient Greek (or the equivalent) are a prerequisite; a diagnostic test will be administered to finalist applicants before the final selection of successful candidates is made.
Application Procedure
Applicants should send a letter by February 15, 2010, to Dr. Margaret Mullett, Director of Byzantine Studies, describing their academic background, career goals, previous study of Greek, and reasons for wishing to attend the summer school. The application should also include a curriculum vitae and a transcript of the graduate school or undergraduate record. Two letters of recommendation should be sent separately, one from the student's advisor, and one from an instructor in Greek, assessing the candidate's present level of competence in ancient or medieval Greek. Principles of selection will include three considerations: previous meritorious achievement, need for intensive study of Byzantine Greek, and future direction of research. Awards will be announced in March 2010, and must be accepted by
April 1.
Please send all required materials to:
Dumbarton Oaks
Program in Byzantine Studies
1703 32nd Street, NW
Washington, DC 20007
Tel.: 202-339-6940 FAX: 202-298-8409, E-mail: Byzantine@doaks.org

GRANTS AWARDED BY THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF BYZANTINE STUDIES

The SPBS is delighted to announce the establishment of the 2006 Fund. This is set up to fund postgraduate students to attend conferences, symposia and exhibitions abroad. It will also offer grants to attend the Society’s Annual Spring Symposia. It is limited to students studying for a postgraduate degree at a British university. Priority will be given to students who have had papers accepted for delivery at the conference for which they are applying. The SPBS also offers small grants to help with the organisation of one-off small conferences, workshops, say-schools or seminars.

See our dedicated grants page for more details

TAY Project: Byzantine Inventory

The entire content of the TAY volume (Inventory of the Byzantine Buildings in the Marmara region) is on the internet now. The data is updated through the field survey and is available in Turkish and in English, together with several recent photographs and plans.

http://www.tayproject.org

[posted on BEDLAM, 9th Nov 2009]

The Byzantium Website

Welcome to Byzantium, the website for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. This site is intended primarily as a platform to disseminate information about SPBS events, research grants and publications. In addition it will complement the Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies (BBBS), containing archived material from past issues. We are also collating useful links to external sites and details of Byzantine courses for students and would welcome any appropriate additions from members. Use the navigation bookmark on the left to explore the site. We hope that members will find this a useful resource and that non-members will be encouraged to join the society.

Teaching Resources
A new section of the SPBS website dedicated to Teaching Resources is currently under construction. This will include a section for “unofficial” or “private” translated texts. Suggestions and offerings of material gratefully accepted. Please contact Liz James, Chair of the Development Committee (E.James@sussex.ax.uk or Department of Art History. University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton).

Contributions to BBBS and the Byzantium web site

Contributors to BBBS should be aware that all publications, announcements and reports published in the Bulletin will also appear at some stage on this web site. If any individual does not wish to make their contributions available on the internet then please contact Byzantium@ncl.ac.uk and we will ensure that the relevant items are removed.

Older news items are held in the archive