Medieval Academy News

Feature: "News from Dumbarton Oaks," by Alice-Mary Talbot, outgoing director of Dumbarton Oaks

The past four years have seen many changes at Dumbarton Oaks that will interest the broader community of medievalists. In the fall of 2005 a new library building designed by Robert Venturi was opened, permitting all the library collections to be integrated and affording more office space for library staff and fellows. The library can now house fellows from all three research programs at Dumbarton Oaks, in Byzantine, pre-Columbian and garden and landscape studies. Academic-year research fellowships are available for both doctoral students engaged in the writing of a dissertation and for post-doctoral scholars at any stage of their career (http://www.doaks.org/research/info_fellowships.html). Summer fellowships are also offered for a period of six to nine weeks. Fellowships in the Byzantine studies program are normally awarded to specialists in Byzantine civilization, but applications will also be considered from western medieval scholars dealing more generally with the medieval Mediterranean world (topics such as the Crusades, trade and economic exchange, east-west relations, Latin-occupied Crete and Cyprus, the Frankish Morea, and the like).

All three programs of studies host regular symposia and colloquia, in addition to occasional public lectures, seminars and informal talks. Many of the symposia and colloquia sponsored by the Byzantine studies program should attract the attention of western medievalists. Topics in recent years include, for example, "Women's Space in Byzantium and the Medieval West," "The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World," "Realities in the Arts of the Medieval Mediterranean," "From Enrico to Andrea Dandolo: Imitation, Appropriate and Meaning at San Marco in Venice," and "Morea: the Land and its People in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade."

The Byzantine library collection of over 150,000 volumes focuses on late antique and Byzantine studies, but is very strong in early medieval Europe (up to about 1000 C.E.) and in the Crusades; it also has more than 550 current journal subscriptions (http://www.doaks.org/library/general_library_collections.html"). The library also houses the Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives, with particular strength in black and white photographs of Byzantine architecture, monumental painting and manuscripts, as well as archives of Dumbarton Oaks fieldwork in Venice, Greece, Istanbul and Cyprus (http://www.doaks.org/library/icfa.html). The library collections, including the Rare Book Room, are open (upon successful application) to advanced doctoral students and to scholars with a doctorate who can demonstrate a need to consult books or photographs at Dumbarton Oaks (http://www.doaks.org/library/access_info.html).

In the summer of 2007 two further significant events occurred: Jan Ziolkowski, professor of medieval Latin at Harvard University, became the seventh director of the institution, succeeding Edward Keenan (1998–2007), and the main building reopened after two years of major renovation. In the two succeeding years there have been further developments and new initiatives. In April 2008 the museum galleries reopened with stunning new exhibits of the permanent collections of Byzantine and pre-Columbian art, installed under the expert guidance of the museum director, Gudrun Bühl, and her staff. A new temporary exhibition gallery has made possible the installation of short-term exhibits on such subjects as Robert Woods and Mildred Barnes Bliss as collectors, and Radiance: Light in Byzantine Art. The opening of the new galleries was marked by the publication of a handsome handbook entitled Dumbarton Oaks: The Collections, edited by Gudrun Bühl.

Among new research opportunities are One-Month Post-Doctoral Stipends, awards of $3,000 for research in the Dumbarton Oaks library, photograph and fieldwork archives, and museum collections (http://www.doaks.org/research/info_post_doctoral_stipends.html). The previously instituted graduate student residencies, now called Short Term Pre-Doctoral Residencies (http://www.doaks.org/research/info_short_term_residencies.html ), have been extended to a four-week period. The program in Byzantine Studies is also now offering a three-year Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellowship, with teaching opportunities at Washington area universities (http://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/doaks_byz_post_doctoral_teaching_fellowship.html). The first fellowship, in the history of early Christian and Byzantine art and architecture, will be held by Dr. Örgü Dalgiç, who will offer courses at the Catholic University of America. A search will be conducted in 2009–2010 in collaboration with George Washington University for a teaching fellow in Byzantine history.

The public lecture programming has also been expanded, and now includes a new series entitled "Perspectives on Islamic and Arabic Culture"; among last year's speakers were Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute, London), who spoke on "Toledo or Mont St Michel: Arabic or Greek Sources for Medieval Latin Culture?" Anthony Cutler (Pennsylvania State University), on "Sicily, Byzantium and Islam: Ivory and the Problem of Hybridity in the Twelfth Century," and Luis Girón Negrón (Harvard University), who lectured on "How Cunning was El Cid? Arabo-Andalusian hiyal in Medieval Castilian Literature." The Byzantine Studies program sponsored lectures by William Noel (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) on the Archimedes manuscript and by Elizabeth Bolman (Temple University) on fresco painting in monastic churches in late antique Upper Egypt, as well as a lecture by Michael McCormick (Harvard University), reporting on the findings of a two-day workshop on climate change in the Late Roman Empire. The museum has also begun to sponsor its own lecture series, including two talks on Roman art and music by Ruth Bielfeldt and Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University, and a discussion of lighting in Byzantium by Lioba Theis (University of Vienna), to supplement the special exhibit on "Radiance."

Now that the capital expansion and renovation project has been completed, Dumbarton Oaks has been able to revive its summer school programs. In 2008 a four-week session on medieval Greek language and paleography was offered by Alice-Mary Talbot and Stratis Papaioannou, and in 2009 a summer school on Byzantine numismatics and sigillography is being presented by Cécile Morrisson and John Nesbitt. It is expected that these programs will continue to be held in alternate years.

Under the leadership of Jan Ziolkowski, general editor, Dumbarton Oaks is sponsoring the preparation of a new series of medieval texts with facing translations, the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. The editors of the three sub-series are Alice-Mary Talbot (medieval Greek), Danuta Shanzer (medieval Latin), and Daniel Donoghue (Old English). The series, to be published by Harvard University Press, is intended to fill the gap between the Loeb Classical Library and the I Tatti Renaissance Library. It is hoped that the first volumes in this series will appear in 2011.

The program of Byzantine publications remains active. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, issued annually since 1941, publishes articles relating to late antique, early medieval, and Byzantine civilization in the fields of art and architecture, history, archaeology, literature, theology, law and the auxiliary disciplines. The entire series is available for online consultation on JSTOR. New volumes in the symposia and colloquia proceedings series planned for release in 2009 and 2010 include Becoming Byzantine: Children and Childhood in Byzantium, edited by Arietta Papaconstantinou and Alice-Mary Talbot; The Old Testament in Byzantium, edited by Paul Magdalino and Robert Nelson; and San Marco, Byzantium and the Myths of Venice, edited by Henry Maguire and Robert Nelson. Other volumes scheduled to appear in the near future are The Taktika of Leo VI, edited and translated by George T. Dennis; Asinou: The Architecture and Murals of the Panagia Phorbiotissa, Cyprus, edited by Annemarie Weyl Carr and Andreas Nicolaides; Byzantium and The Arabs in the Sixth Century, volume 2, part 2 by Irfan Shahîd; and Pilgrimage Art, revised edition, by Gary Vikan.

In addition to the books published under the aegis of the program in Byzantine Studies, Jan Ziolkowski is editing a new series entitled Medieval Humanities. The initial publication in this series will be Michael McCormick's Charlemagne's Survey of the Holy Land: Wealth, Personnel and Buildings of a Mediterranean Church between Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

2009 is another transitional year, since on July 1 Margaret Mullett succeeded Alice-Mary Talbot (1997–2009) as Director of Byzantine Studies. Prof. Mullett, a specialist in Byzantine literature, comes to Dumbarton Oaks after a long career at Queen's University in Belfast where she championed and promoted the study of Byzantium, and directed the Institute of Byzantine Studies. She will oversee a number of academic events during 2009-10, including colloquia on iconoclasm in various cultures, phenomenology in Byzantine art, and friendship in the middle ages, and the annual spring symposium on "Warfare in the Byzantine World." For further information, see the Dumbarton Oaks website for Byzantine Studies (http://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/).

Alice-Mary Talbot

Director of Byzantine Studies, emerita, Dumbarton Oaks

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