Along the Seine: A River Cruise from Paris to Normandy

Madeline Díaz is an artist, art historian, and educator based in Paris who designs and leads innovative programs for major museums and cultural institutions in France, Spain, and the U.S. She has worked for The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters, the Frick Collection, and the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. She currently serves as consulting educator for the Smithsonian National Museum for the American Latino. In France, Madeline has developed educational programs for institutions such as the Grand Palais, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, and the former American Center. She created a signature education program in collaboration with renowned venues including the Jeu de Paume, the Centre Pompidou, and the Musée d’Art Moderne. She regularly teaches museum education at the University of Versailles and lectures for Smithsonian Journeys programs in France, as well as for the Smithsonian Associates.

As a practicing artist, she has recently exhibited her work at the National Museum of Oman and the American Embassy in Oman, as well as galleries in Spain. Madeline has traveled extensively throughout France, Spain, and Italy in collaboration with cultural institutions, and holds a BA from Brown University and an MA from Columbia University.

BJ McDuffie has more than a decade of experience in cultural diplomacy and international exchange and offers a deep understanding of how culture, communications, and history intertwine. During 12 years at the U.S. Department of State, she coordinated global cultural exchange programs in more than two dozen countries. She lived in Paris for more than five years, during which she taught courses in intercultural communications and film to Summer Study in Paris students; delivered a guest lecture at the Université Paris Sorbonne; and led cultural excursions to Paris, Normandy, the Loire Valley, Versailles, and beyond.  

BJ holds a master’s in global communications and civil society from the American University of Paris and a certificate in book publishing from the CUNY Publishing Institute. She is passionate about history and culture and thrilled to share the stories beneath the stones of France. 

Bénédicte Boisseron was born in France of a French mother and a French-Caribbean father from Guadeloupe. She is now living in the U.S. as a professor and the chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her interdisciplinary research brings into conversation Caribbean studies, global Black studies, and environmental humanities through a literary, historical, and cultural lens.

Bénédicte’s first book, Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora received the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association and the Barbara T. Christian Literary Award honorable mention for best book in the humanities from the Caribbean Studies Association. Her second book, Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question is one of the first book-length studies on the intersection between Black life and animal rights in the history and culture of the Americas and the Black Atlantic.

Her current book project, titled The Hand That Feeds and supported by a 2022-2023 Guggenheim fellowship, is part memoir and part reflection on the power of food and taste in a French, Caribbean, and American context. Bénédicte is also at work on a short book about the everyday practice of living with dogs from an international perspective. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in her fields of expertise and has traveled extensively for research and for pleasure.

Joan Grimbert is professor emerita of French and medieval studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where she taught the language, literature, civilization, and culture of France for 27 years. A graduate of Middlebury College (B.A., French) and the University of Chicago (PhD, Romance Philology), she lived and worked in Paris for six years as a student, researcher, and translator. Joan has published six books and numerous scholarly articles, primarily on the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes and the legend of Tristan and Isolde from the 12th century to the present. Although her research is focused on literature and film, French history and art history are two of her greatest loves. A dual citizen of France and the United States, Joan has been named Chevalier in the Ordre des Palmes académiques in recognition of her work promoting French culture.

Jennifer Eremeeva is an American expatriate writer, historian, and lecturer who explores the intersections of travel, history, culture, cuisine, and culinary history. She is a passionate Francophile and student of French history who has traveled extensively throughout France. Jennifer has a particular interest in the medieval Normans and never passes up an opportunity to visit their strongholds in Northern France. She studied Russian history at Columbia University in New York and photography at the Moscow Institute of Photography. She is the author of the award-winning memoir, Lenin Lives Next Door: Marriage, Martinis, and Mayhem in Moscow, and a pocket guide to Russian history, Have Personality Disorder, Will Rule Russia. Her work has also been featured on NPR and Reuters and in publications such as Fodor’s Travel, AAA Magazine, Bucket List Travels, Russian Life, and Elysian magazine. Jennifer currently produces a bi-weekly travel newsletter as well as a series of popular “8-Hour Guides” to major travel destinations. 

Dr. Ralph L. DeFalco III is a historian, a writer, a lecturer, and a retired national security intelligence professional whose career spanned five decades. He achieved the rank of captain during 25 years in the United States Navy and later served as a civilian intelligence professional on the Pentagon staff of the director of naval intelligence. Ralph is a graduate and former faculty member of the National Intelligence University and the College of Naval Command and Staff of the U.S. Naval War College, where he served as Fleet Professor. He earned his doctoral degree at Georgetown University.

Ralph has studied and published widely on topics ranging from military history and geopolitics to foreign affairs and applied ethics.  He is a contributing author to the two-volume work, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Encyclopedia of Covert Ops, Intelligence Gathering, and Spies and his numerous essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in various websites and publications, including Naval History Magazine, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, National Strategy Forum Review, and H-net.

Tim Richardson is a leading historian of gardens, art, architecture, and food and the author of more than 25 acclaimed books, including Great Gardens of America, The English Landscape Garden, and Sweets: A History of Candy. After studying English literature at Oxford, Tim began his career at Country Life magazine, where he became the gardens editor and theater critic for 23 years. He went on to write for a wide range of publications, as a long-time columnist for the Daily Telegraph, landscape editor for Wallpaper,* and contributor to Literary Review and the Financial Times. He is currently art critic at The Idler magazine.   

Tim is known for his witty and sometimes irreverent style; a collection of his garden journalism was entitled You Should Have Been Here Last Week, because, he says, that is what garden owners always seem to say. This mischievous spirit led him to found the Chelsea Fringe Festival in 2012—as an adjunct to the famous Chelsea Flower Show but with an emphasis on community gardening and artistic happenings. It has been the platform for more than 2,500 events in some 22 countries. Tim volunteers as an advisor to the National Trust in the United Kingdom and works as a consultant on historic gardens and houses.  

As a visiting professor at Vienna University for several years, Tim taught landscape art—and enjoyed the cafes and cakes! He now teaches a master’s course in landscape history at London University; and wrote an online course on the topic that is taught at Oxford University's continuing education department. Tim lives in London and Devon with his wife, Claire, and enjoys competing in the sport of fencing. 

Paul Glenshaw has cultivated a career in storytelling through his work as lecturer, drawing instructor, documentary filmmaker, and artist. Paul specializes in French-American stories, and studies art history and military history in tandem, with particular emphasis on 18th, 19th, and early 20th-century subjects. He has traveled and filmed across northern France, including Normandy, for his documentary The Lafayette Escadrille, which is streaming on the PBS Passport platform. His popular, long-running lecture series Art+History, initially created for the Smithsonian Associates, has been presented around the country in person and online. They include presentations on masterworks like The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault and Picasso’s Guernica have led him into French maritime history on the Atlantic coast and the spiritual heart of the Basque region of northern Spain.

Paul is an expert in the history of early aviation and was a longtime contributor to Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine. His articles have appeared diverse publications, from Racquet magazine to the Folger Library’s Shakespeare and Beyond blog. A lifetime resident of the Washington, D.C. area, Paul is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis.

Benjamin Sutherland writes for The Economist, reporting on military and defense issues as well as energy, business, science, and political culture. He edited Modern Warfare, Intelligence and Deterrence, an Economist book on how advances in weaponry and spycraft are reshaping global security, and wrote a chapter on the future of warfare for the book Megatech: Technology in 2050. He also contributes to Economist podcasts.

Benjamin periodically teaches undergraduate, graduate and MBA courses in geopolitics and international business as an adjunct. In recent years, he has taught at HEC-Paris; the Paris School of Business; the Zagreb School of Economics and Management; and, in Italy, H-Farm College and Scuola Holden. Earlier in his career, he wrote for Newsweek and was a senior editor at COLORS magazine. He also served as a staff screenwriter with Cinemarket Productions in Paris, and co-directed the Sundance Channel documentary Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man.

As an expert for Smithsonian Journeys, Benjamin has focused on Europe, the Persian Gulf, and the broader Middle East. His lectures cast light on a broad range of geopolitical topics, from Central Europe’s reemergence as a geopolitical pivot in the struggle between authoritarian states and free societies to Russia’s grand strategy and its geographic roots, to clashes in civilizational visions for world order. His lectures are richly illustrated with insights from his reporting for The Economist in more than a dozen countries. An avid traveler, Sutherland speaks French and Italian fluently and is proficient in Spanish.