Photo caption: A rare depiction of a Byzantine school (from the Madrid Skylitzes).

This past summer Charlie Kuper (PhD Candidate, MA 2013) participated in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Greek Summer School in Washington, DC. The focus of this school was its daily translation sessions from a wide variety of both prose and poetic texts from the 4th through the 15th centuries, including orations of Gregory of Nazianzus, Athonite legal documents, and excerpts from the epic poem Digenes Akrites. The program also included a mini-course on Greek paleography, in which participants studied the most important majuscule and minuscule Greek scripts and were able to view some of the facsimiles in the Dumbarton Oaks collection.  During his time in Washington, Charlie was also able to finish one of his current side projects, the first modern language translation of the Life of St. Martha (early 7th century) under the guidance of the faculty there.