Kuper Awarded Research Fellowship
Charles Kuper, assistant professor of classics, will be a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks during the coming academic year, 2026-27. Dumbarton Oaks is Harvard University’s research center for Byzantine Studies in Washington, D.C.
This highly competitive residential fellowship is awarded to scholars from across the world who study the Byzantine Empire, its civilization and cultural interactions, or related topics. The only requirement for Fellows is that they devote themselves entirely to their research. Kuper will begin working on his second book project, Sacred Suicide in Late Antiquity, which investigates the negotiation of this sensitive topic in Christian literature and culture of the time.
More broadly, Kuper works on Latin, Greek, and Syriac texts from late antiquity to the middle ages. Most of his recent publications have focused on the Christian cult of the saints and hagiography. In November of last year, he published his first book, The Menologion of Basil II (Harvard University Press), which includes a critical Greek edition, English translation, and commentary of one of the most famous liturgical manuscripts surviving from Byzantium, a brilliantly illuminated calendar of the saints made for the emperor himself. You can view the manuscript on the Digital Vatican Library (DVL) website.