Stephen Clancy

Stephen Clancy is an art and architectural historian with special expertise in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance art and architecture. A popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, he has led more than 20 tours and cruises through the Mediterranean region and northern Europe.

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). In addition he gave conference presentations on the role of ivory carvings within the political and economic spheres of the Byzantine empire.

Stephen also received grants from the Hewlett and Keck foundations in support of a project that investigated how technology can open up new avenues for understanding the architecture of the distant past. This culminated in his work with a team of students and faculty from the University of Melbourne in Australia on an interactive web-based undertaking entitled “Virtual Chartres Cathedral.”

In an effort to create a more inclusive curriculum, Stephen traveled 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. Out of this research he developed a course entitled “Jewish Imagery and Images of Jews.”

More recently Stephen refocused his work on interactions during the Middle Ages between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Mediterranean basin. 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.”

The academic pursuit he has enjoyed above all others is teaching and sharing his knowledge of art and architecture. He has served as a lecturer on numerous tours over the past twenty-seven years in the Mediterranean from Turkey to Spain, and in northern Europe from Scandinavia to Russia.

Christopher Brennan

Christopher Brennan, guest researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and lecturer at Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic, is a historian specialized in Central and Eastern Europe with a particular interest in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, Germany and the history of the Czechs. Though British, he grew up in south-western France. He obtained a BA in Modern Languages (German and Russian, plus Czech) at the University of Bristol and a Master’s in Slavonic Studies from Oriel College at the University of Oxford.

Dr. Brennan studied for a PhD at the London School of Economics on the subject of the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire and the degree of responsibility of its last monarch, Emperor Karl I. He taught undergraduates there for four years, with a one year hiatus in Paris lecturing American undergraduates on French history and on the history of Eastern European Communism. He has written on the memory of World War I and of the Habsburg Dynasty, on the Balkan Wars, on the author Joseph Roth, and on interwar Austria. He has authored chapters to several volumes on the collapse of Austria-Hungary and its aftermath, and is now working on a biography of Karl I. Returning to his first love (French History), he also plans to research Franco-Austrian relations before and after the Great War. He publishes in English, French and German.

Tim Blanning

Tim Blanning is Professor Emeritus of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge. A Fellow of the British Academy since 1990, Tim has published extensively on the political and cultural history of Europe in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Among his publications are The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture (2002), The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 (2007), The Triumph of Music (2008) and The Romantic Revolution (2010).  Tim's books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, German, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Croatian and Arabic. His most recent book is a best-selling and prize-winning biography of Frederick the Great King of Prussia, published by Penguin/Random House. For his current project on the exciting if notorious Augustus ‘the Strong’ of Saxony and Poland he has expanded his area of expertise to include the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe.

Carol Reynolds

After a long career as a music-history professor at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, specializing in Russian and German Studies, Carol Reynolds now combines her insights on historical culture and the arts with her passion for education to create curricula empowering students and adults in their study of the Liberal Arts. Since 2011 she has spent significant time each year traveling for Smithsonian Journeys as an expert on tours across Europe and the Adriatic. She also works closely with her colleagues at Memoria Press, Classical Academic Press, and other publishers in the revival of Classical Education, speaking widely and contributing courses designed to teach history through the lens of the Fine Arts. Her publications include her signature program Discovering Music, Imperial Russia, Early Sacred Music, America’s Artistic Legacy, and A Child’s Treasure of Music. She just published a classic family songbook called Hurrah and Hallelujah. 

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.

Ralph Nurnberger

Ralph Nurnberger is an acclaimed speaker who brings humor, historical background and current political insights to his presentations. He has spoken on a number of Smithsonian Journeys as well as at the Smithsonian Associates program in Washington D.C., where his presentations frequently “sell out”. He has appeared on radio and television programs as an analyst on political and international issues. Ralph earned his PhD in History from Georgetown University and subsequently taught as an adjunct at Georgetown for 38 years. He was named Professor of the Year by the Graduate School of Liberal Studies in 2003. He currently lectures on a wide range of historical and political subjects at Florida Atlantic University’s Life Long Learning Programs. Ralph has spoken at a number of universities and other venues in Europe, including in the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Austria, France, Denmark and especially in Germany, where he has given presentations in East and West Berlin, Hamburg and Chemnitz. In addition to his public speaking and academic careers, Ralph has had positions in and related to the U.S. government (staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; US Department of Commerce; Director of “Builders for Peace”, which was established to assist the Arab-Israeli peace process); as a fellow at a prominent “think tank” (Center for Strategic and International Studies – CSIS); and as senior partner in a government relations firm for over 25 years.