Sheri Shaneyfelt

Sheri Shaneyfelt is an art historian of the Italian Renaissance and Principal Senior Lecturer in Renaissance art at Vanderbilt University, where she is also Director of Undergraduate and Graduate Studies for the History of Art and Architecture department and Director of Vanderbilt’s Master’s program in Liberal Arts and Science. A triple-award-winning lecturer, she also teaches courses in Northern European Renaissance and Baroque art at Vanderbilt. She earned her Ph.D. at Indiana University-Bloomington, with an M.A. from Vanderbilt, both in the History of Art, and an undergraduate B.S. in Biology from Centre College. Professor Shaneyfelt specializes in Central Italian art, particularly that of Umbria and Tuscany. She lived and worked in Italy for long periods of time teaching for study-abroad programs in Perugia and Florence. Her research has been published in top art-historical journals and in her book Renaissance Painting in Perugia: Perugino, Raphael, and their Circles (Cambridge, 2023). A seasoned Smithsonian Journeys expert, she has extensive experience in and loves leading groups and lecturing on site, and emphasizes the role of art and architecture in context. 

Adam Tanner

Writer and lecturer Adam Tanner spent many years as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, including as Balkans bureau chief; San Francisco bureau chief; and correspondent in Germany, Moscow, and Washington D.C. He has long studied colonialism, economic engagement, and globalization, with a particular interest in the enduring impact of Europe on Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, NPR, and the BBC, and written for publications such as Scientific America, Forbes, Fortune, Time, and Frommer’s guidebooks.  

Adam is an associate at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) at Harvard University, where began as a fellow at the Nieman Foundation in 2011. He has written two books on privacy and commerce: Our Bodies, Our Data and What Stays in Vegas.

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.

Luca Zavagno

Luca Zavagno graduated from the University of Venice (2002); he obtained his Ph.D. (2007) at the University of Birmingham with a dissertation on the society, economics and politics of Byzantine cities in the early middle ages. He is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Studies in the Department of History at Bilkent University where is currently working on his third monography entitled Beyond the Periphery. The Byzantine Insular World between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (c.a. 600–c.a. 900) (ARC-Medieval Press).

Dr. Zavagno is the author of many articles on the early Medieval and Byzantine Mediterranean, as well as as well as three monographs including: Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (British Archaeological Reports-International Series, 2009), and Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. An Island in Transition (Routledge, 2017). He co-authored (with Özlem Caykent) the edited volumes Islands of Eastern Mediterranean. A History of Cross Cultural Encounters (I.B. Tauris, 2014) and People and Goods on the Move. Merchants, Networks and Communication Routes in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean (IMK, 2016).  

He was also twice awarded the Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship (2011 and 2016) as well as the prestigious Stanley Seeger Fellowship of the Hellenic Studies Center at Princeton University (2012).

Dianne Konz

Dianne Konz, throughout her studies and teaching career, \ has pursued her love of art and architecture.  Her undergraduate studies at Tulane University included a year at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, with a year-long course at the Prado Museum.  She received both her Master’s Degree and her Doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin, returning to Spain and Italy at every opportunity for research.  She received numerous fellowships and grants for study abroad, including a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Fellowship. She taught Spanish literature, language, and civilization at U.T. Austin and at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. 

Dianne greatly enjoyed living in Rome for three years, traveling extensively throughout Italy and Sicily, studying art and architecture –and cuisine—both independently and with professionals.  As a lecturer, she especially enjoys integrating the arts within the context of their time.  Painting and architecture –like literature, music, and gastronomy— reflect not only the brilliance of individuals, but also history, politics, and geography.  With this in mind, some topics of special interest that Dianne will be addressing on this tour include the Renaissance rivalries among Venetian and Tuscan painters, the Central Italian Mannerists, and monumental Roman construction techniques. 

Dianne’s Italian roots run deep: her paternal grandfather immigrated from Sicily, and it was her Italian-American family who initially inspired her love of Italian cooking (and opera!).  Today, regional Italian gastronomies –and their corresponding wines—are a personal passion for Dianne, and she will be addressing these in lively commentary along the way.

John Dobbins

John Dobbins, who holds a PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan is Professor Emeritus of Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Virginia, is a long-time Smithsonian Journeys speaker who enjoys interacting with travelers and sharing their adventures.  John is a field archaeologist who has excavated across the Mediterranean world and beyond: Spain, Greece, Syria, and three locations in Italy – Tuscany, Sicily, and Pompeii where he is director of the Pompeii Forum Project that is rewriting the history of the Pompeii Forum, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, UVA grants, private donors, and considerable (unfunded) professorial research and writing. 

John has been an active member of the Archaeological Institute of America, a professional archaeological organization that welcomes non-professionals as members, and that fosters 100 local “Societies” in the United States and Canada.  It conducts a lecture program that sends professional archaeologists as lecturers to all Societies, 2 or 3 per year.  At its Annual Meeting in 2023, the AIA recognized John’s contributions by awarding him the Joukowsky Distinguished Service Award.  He enjoyed every decade of supporting the mission of the AIA.

John may be a retired professor, but he is not a retired archaeologist or adventurer.

Valerie Hedquist

Valerie Hedquist is a professor of art history at the University of Montana. She earned her Ph.D. with honors at the University of Kansas and has been teaching and writing for nearly 30 years. Her research focuses on the arts of the 17th and 18th centuries and includes articles on the religious paintings of Rembrandt and Vermeer. Of special interest is the influence of Italian cultural attitudes on the visual output of these Dutch artists and others. Her book on the changing reception and meaning of Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy was published in summer 2019.

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).

Sara James

Sara N. James, Professor Emerita of Art History at Mary Baldwin University, combines her passion for art, architecture, and gardens with her sense of adventure and love of travel. She specializes in Italian Renaissance art with a particular passion for narrative fresco programs. However, over her 30-year teaching career, Sara has taught courses in Renaissance (Italian and Northern), Baroque, Greek, Roman, Medieval, and English art and architecture, as well as interdisciplinary honors courses. She also served as director of the Renaissance Studies Abroad Program, teaching students on site in Italy and Northern Europe. An avid gardener and garden lover, she is a certified Master Gardener and a member of the Garden Club of Virginia and the Garden Club of America. Her publications include two books: Signorelli and Fra Angelico at Orvieto: Liturgy, Poetry and a Vision of the End-time (Ashgate, 2003) and Art in England from the Saxons to the Tudors: 600-1600 (Oxbow/Casemate, 2016) and numerous chapters, articles, and reviews. Her frequent speaking engagements include the Renaissance Society of America, the College Art Association, the Chief Executives Organization, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Sara holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Virginia. She has spent three sabbaticals at the American Academy in Rome and one at the Paul Mellon Centre in London. She is a member of Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society and currently serves on the faculty of the OLLI life learning program at the University of Virginia.

Joanne Ferraro

Joanne Ferraro (PhD UCLA) is the Albert W. Johnson Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at San Diego State University.  Her courses have covered the ancient Greek and Roman world as well as medieval, Renaissance, and early modern northern and southern Europe. She is especially interested in Europe’s cross-cultural and global connections with greater Asia and the Americas.  Joanne has published books with Cambridge, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins University presses with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. She is the General Editor for Bloomsbury Academic’s six- volume Cultural History of Marriage from Antiquity to the Present.  Her current book, The Renaissance and the Wider World, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury.  Joanne has lectured on Smithsonian Journeys to Northern and Southern Europe for the past decade. She has lived in Europe for extensive periods and has taught European history for 38 years.