Stephen Clancy

Stephen Clancy recently retired as Professor of Art History at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York, where he taught for twenty-seven years.  After receiving his Ph.D from Cornell University, Stephen taught the history of Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance art and architecture, as well as courses on visual persuasion and the rhetoric of art.  His research career began with a focus on fifteenth-century French and Flemish illuminated manuscripts, specifically with works connected to the artists Jean Fouquet (about whom he has written a book, a book chapter, and several articles) and Simon Marmion (for which he received a 1995-96 Fulbright Scholarship in Brussels, Belgium).  Stephen is a recipient of grants from the Hewlett and Keck foundations.

Stephen worked with a team of students and faculty from the University of Melbourne in Australia to investigate how technology can open up new avenues for understanding the art and architecture of the distant past, in a project entitled “Virtual Chartres Cathedral.” More recently he was a Visiting Fellow at the Australia National University in Canberra, investigating the roles that images play in shaping cultural identity, in a project entitled “Visualizing the Self and Others: Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Medieval Iberia.”

Stephen’s latest research project has seen him develop a course entitled “Jewish Imagery and Images of Jews,” and has taken him to a number of medieval Jewish cultural sites in Spain, Germany, and France, where the past is being revived and reinvented in interesting and sometimes controversial ways. The academic pursuit he has enjoyed above all others is teaching and sharing his knowledge of art and architecture. He has served as lecturer on numerous tours over the past twenty-two years in the Mediterranean and in northern Europe, from Scandinavia to Russia.

Allen James Fromherz

Dr. Allen Fromherz is a Professor of Mediterranean and Middle East History at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth College in 2002 and received his PhD from St. Andrews University in Scotland in Medieval Islamic History in 2006. His first two books, The Almohads: the Rise of an Islamic Empire (IB Tauris) and Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times (Edinburgh University Press) examine the rise of empire in medieval North Africa and Iberia. Dr. Fromherz's most recently completed work The Near West: North Africa and Europe (Edinburgh – Expected end of 2016), examines the history of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish interactions across the Western Mediterranean, especially in Iberia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Italy.  Dr. Fromherz has held several international fellowships from Fulbright, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, and a senior fellowship from NYU Abu Dhabi. Dr. Fromherz has led and organized four study abroads, including the popular Marvels of Medieval Spain: the Culture and History of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. His regular classes on Medieval Spain and the Mediterranean focus on convivencia, how Muslims, Jews, and Christians, living together, created a common culture that still lives on in Iberia to this day.

George Greenia

George Greenia did his undergraduate work at Marquette University in Milwaukee and PhD at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is a specialist in the languages, literatures and linguistics of medieval Spain and teaches courses on Spanish Language, Epic and Nationalism, Hispanic Folktales, and Love and Prostitution in Medieval Spain. He is co-founder of the William & Mary Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and founder of the William & Mary Institute for Pilgrimage Studies. His interest in world pilgrimage spans many times, territories and traditions and he is an authority on the legendary Camino de Santiago in northern Spain where he has trekked over 4,000 miles, half on bicycle, half on foot.
Most summers he takes William & Mary undergraduates backpacking on the pilgrimage trails to conduct interdisciplinary field research. For his promotion of Spanish culture in the United States, in 2007 Greenia was knighted by order of King Juan Carlos I of Spain and granted the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel la Católica.  Sir George Greenia is a co-founding member of the International Fraternity of the Camino de Santiago, headquartered in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and inducted by cathedral officials as a member of the Archconfraternity of the Apostle St. James.  In 2010 the Concejo de la Enxebre Orden de la Vieira, a confraternity of Galicians in the diaspora who support the Camino de Santiago, named him an “Ángel del Camino”.  In 2016 Greenia was presented a Lifetime Achievement Award from American Pilgrims on the Camino for playing a “significant role … in building the pilgrim community within the United States”.