Joanne Ferraro 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 of Bloomsbury Academic’s six-volume Cultural History of Marriage from Antiquity to the Present. Her latest book, The Renaissance and the Wider World, surveys the history of Europe between 1250 and 1600, an era of profound importance and renowned cultural achievement. Joanne has lectured for Smithsonian Journeys for the past decade, has lived and traveled in Europe for extensive periods, and is an enthusiast of the continent’s rich history and culture.