Cassandra Potts Hannahs

Cassandra Potts Hannahs is a historian with special expertise in Celtic, Viking, and Anglo-Norman studies. She has enjoyed traveling with Smithsonian Journeys on more than 50 tours and cruises, sharing her passion and knowledge of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.

With a Ph.D. in medieval history, she was a tenured professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, where she taught courses on a wide range of subjects, from ancient history through the Reformation.  A Fulbright scholar and recipient of several grants, she has also spent considerable time living in France pursuing research.  Her publications include a book exploring the Viking settlement of Normandy in northern France during the 10th and 11th centuries, and the revival of monasticism that took place as the new rulers encouraged monks to return to the region after the Viking raids. 

In her research and lectures, Cassandra explores the cultural and political exchanges that have historically linked Britain, France, Ireland, and Scandinavia. She looks forward to sharing her love and knowledge of these lands, their history, music, and literature, with Smithsonian Journeys travelers.

Lisa Passaglia Bauman

Lisa Passaglia Bauman is an art historian of the Italian Renaissance and professor of Art History at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. A recipient of the university’s Teaching Excellence Award, she is consistently praised for her ability to turn students’ required course in the Arts into one of their favorite experiences at the university.  She earned her Ph.D. at Northwestern University, and her scholarly publications focus on cardinals as patrons in late fifteenth-century Rome and the elaborate rhetoric of patronage of the della Rovere family.  She has been the Academic Director for George Mason’s Semester program in Florence, Italy, and at Oxford University in England, and she currently runs two study abroad programs for the university: Art and Memory in Rome and Florence, a summer program that explores the classical world of ancient Rome and its rebirth in the Renaissance, and From Roman to Parisian: Shaping the Urban Experience in France from Antiquity to the Modern Period, a winter course in urban design. Before coming to George Mason, Professor Bauman worked in the Department of Museum Education at the Art Institute of Chicago where she developed and presented gallery walks and public lectures on the permanent collection and special exhibitions.  Her years of lecturing in front of the art work have informed her teaching as she strives to engage her students more intimately with the object, its history and its cultural context.