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. 

Kenneth Ledford

Kenneth F. Ledford is Associate Professor of History and Law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, where he has taught since 1991.  A specialist in the history of modern Germany, his scholarship has focused on the history of German law, legal professions, and legal professionals since 1815.  He has published From General Estate to Special Interest: German Lawyers 1878-1933 (Cambridge University Press, 1996), numerous articles and reviews, and he was Editor of the scholarly journal Central European History from 2004-14.  His current research is on the Prussian judiciary from the Revolution of 1848 to 1914.   He holds a BA in history and a JD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an MA and PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University.  He has lived and researched in Germany, particularly in Göttingen and Berlin, and traveled broadly in western, central, and southern Europe.  He regularly teaches in the Senior Scholars program at CWRU, an adult continuing education program, and he has led educational travel in Europe.  Before coming to Case Western Reserve, he served as Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC and continues to serve there as a member of its Academic Advisory Council.

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.

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.

Alexander J. Motyl

Alexander J. Motyl (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1984) is professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. He served as associate director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in 1992-1998 and of the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers in 1999-2009; he has taught at Harvard, Lehigh, and Kyiv Mohyla Universities and lectured throughout Europe. Trained as a Sovietologist and East Europeanist, he has expanded his research interests to Western and Central Europe, especially with respect to the historical development of nations and nationalism, the rise and fall of empires, and the causes and consequences of revolutions. He is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs and is the author of seven academic books, nine novels, and two collections of poetry; also a painter, Motyl has exhibited in solo and group shows in New York, Philadelphia, and Toronto. Learn more about Alexander Motyl at alexmotyl.com.