Andrew Becker

Dr. Andrew Becker (Andy) was born in Burma (now Myanmar), spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, and has continued to travel ever since (mostly Europe and Asia).  He has been lecturing in Italy since 1997, first as a professor teaching students abroad, then since 2015 with Smithsonian Journeys.  His degrees are from the University Michigan (BA), Cambridge University (BA/MA), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D.). Andy teaches at Virginia Tech (with stints teaching in Switzerland and London), and has won numerous local and national awards for teaching.

Andy’s scholarly specialties are ancient: specifically the cultures, literatures, and languages of Ancient Rome (and Greece), as well as the constant, recurring re-engagement of many later civilizations with Ancient Rome (and Greece).

Natalie Latteri

Natalie Latteri holds a B.A. in History from the University of California at Davis, a M.A. in History from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in History with an emphasis in medieval European interfaith relations from the University of New Mexico. Her areas of specialization include Jewish and Christian religious history and she has extensive training in biblical and medieval Hebrew as well as ancient and medieval Latin, honed during her doctoral research at the archives of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. 

Natalie has been interested in world and religious history since childhood, when she developed a penchant for listening to her two grandfathers’ stories of their service in the Second World War. She has conducted research and traveled through England, Germany, Hungary, France, Basque Country, Mexico, and Italy, and is hoping to explore Northern Africa and East Asia in the near future.  

She currently teaches a variety of Humanities, History, and Religious Studies Courses—including Comparative Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Civilizations, Comparative Mythology, Fairytales and Folklore, and Jewish-Christian Relations—at Foothill College in California’s Silicon Valley and at the University of San Francisco. Her most recent research focuses on global conspiracy theories and their societal impact.  

Gary Radke

Gary Radke served as Dean's Professor of the Humanities and professor of art history in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University. Upon joining the faculty in 1980, he promptly took over the Florence Graduate Program in Italian Renaissance Art and has since helped elevate it- and the department of Art & Music Histories in general- to international prominence. Radke is one of the world's leading experts on Italian Medieval and Renaissance art and architecture, with a special interest in 15th-century Florentine sculpture. Since 2001, Radke has served as a guest curator at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, where he organized a series of high-profile shows-and their respective exhibition catalogs- featuring works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, and other Italian Renaissance masters. Radke is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Guillermo Grenier

Guillermo J. Grenier, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies in the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Dr. Grenier is one of the founders of the Miami school of social analysis, and has authored or coauthored six books and dozens of articles on labor, migration and immigrant political culture. Dr. Grenier has been a Fulbright Fellow and a Faculty Fellow of the University of Notre Dame's Institute of Latino Studies as well as Director of the Florida Center for Labor Research and Studies. Since 1991, he has served as a lead investigator of the FIU Cuba Poll, the most cited source on the political culture of Cuban-Americans in Florida.

His passion for long distance trekking has led him to explore historic trails throughout Europe. He first walked the Camino de Santiago from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela and since then has walked dozens of the pilgrimage trails winding through Europe, including many of the historically rich Italian trails. The unique regional histories of Italy come alive as one walks its ancient paths: from trails which trace the experiences of the transhumance journeys of the earliest cultures to the Roman roads which still extend throughout the country, and the trails where holy men and women spread their faith.  The cammini d’Italia and their link to Italian history have become incorporated into Dr. Grenier’s curricula as he teaches his students how societies change while maintaining a strong sense of identity and social cohesion. In the summer, he teaches courses on the sociology of globalization in Genova using the richness of regional Italian history to highlight the relativity of the concept of globalization and its characteristics.

He lectures nationally and internationally on his research. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology and his M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.

Allan Langdale

Allan Langdale grew up on Vancouver Island wondering what the rest of the world was like and has spent much of his adult life finding out. Allan is an art and architectural historian, photographer, filmmaker, and travel writer who received his Ph.D. in art history from UC Santa Barbara. He has taught courses in Italian Renaissance art, Greek, Roman, Byzantine (including Georgian and Armenian architecture), and Indian and Islamic art and architecture. He currently teaches art history at UC Santa Cruz as a lecturer.

Along with several articles, Allan wrote the definitive architectural field guide to the little-known region of Turkish Cyprus, In a Contested Realm (2012) and also made the award-winning documentary film The Stones of Famagusta: the Story of a Forgotten City (2008). His travel books include Palermo: Travels in the City of Happiness (2015) and The Hippodrome of Istanbul / Constantinople: An Illustrated Handbook of its History (2019).

A popular Smithsonian Expert, Allan has traveled extensively in the eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, the Middle East—including Jordan and Egypt—and India.

Sanjaya Thakur

Sanjaya Thakur is professor of Classics at Colorado College, where he also holds the Judson Bemis Professorship in the Humanities.  Professor Thakur earned a B.S. from UCLA, double-majoring in Biology and Latin, two Master's degrees (Classical Studies and Classical Art/Archaeology) and a PhD from the University of Michigan.  He has led many study tours through Greece, Italy, and Spain and is an avid traveler.  He has held a number of national leadership positions in the field of Classical Studies, including chairmanship of the Committee on Diversity in the Profession for the Society for Classical Studies.

Professor Thakur has served as the Director of the Classical Summer School at the American Academy in Rome (2021-23) and Elizabeth A. Whitehead Scholar at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens (2022-23).  He has published numerous articles, primarily on the literature and history of the age of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. He teaches a wide range of courses on Greek and Roman history, Latin language and literature, ancient athletics, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, and Greek and Roman art and archaeology. He has also co-directed and organized an Associated Colleges of the Midwest seminar in advanced interdisciplinary learning (SAIL), entitled Mediterranean Trivium, based in Italy.