Each summer, the School of Arts and Sciences offers intensive courses in European languages to incoming and continuing graduate students. These courses are tailored to developing the reading knowledge that doctoral students require. They are suitable for students who have no prior experience with the language, as well as for those seeking a brush-up. Priority is given to graduate students in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences, but others are accommodated as space permits. These courses are free to students who participate, thanks to an endowment from the Mellon Foundation. However, these courses provide neither grades nor formal academic credit. 

Most years four languages are offered. Due to high demand, French and German are offered every year, while Italian, Latin, ancient Greek, Spanish, and occasionally Portuguese are offered as demand dictates.

The courses are scheduled to run for five weeks, three hours per day (though this schedule may be adjusted as instructor and students see fit and may depend in part on the modality of any given course).  They are scheduled for the second half of the summer, ending before graduate orientation, which typically takes place in the third full week of August. This scheduling aims to provide ongoing students with concentrated time in the first half of the summer to pursue their own research, as well as to accommodate incoming first-year graduate students who would like to participate. This year, the dates for these courses are likely to be 14 July to 15 August, or something close to that, with precise dates to be confirmed later.

Students interested or potentially interested in participating in one of these courses are requested to send an email to Professor Stephen Campbell, Director of the Charles Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe (stephen.campbell@jhu.edu).  In this e-mail please include:

• your name and department,
• the language in which you would be interested to enroll, and
• the modality you would prefer—in person, online, or hybrid. This might depend upon your likely physical location, any health or accessibility concerns you may have, and the like. Instructors will take expressed preferences of students, as well as their own preferences, into account in considering what modality to employ for any given course.

Once the organizers have processed these initial expressions of interest, a final determination will be made about languages offered, dates, instructors, modalities, course materials, and schedule. This information will then be announced, with instructions for signing up, through broadcast e-mails sent out to graduate student community.

It would be appreciated if graduate students would help the Singleton Center spread the word about these offerings, to ensure broad awareness of this valuable opportunity.