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.

Ross King

Dr. Ross King is the best-selling author of books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. Among his books are Brunelleschi’s Dome (2000), Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling (2002), and Leonardo and The Last Supper (2012). His study of the origins of French Impressionism, The Judgement of Paris, was published in 2006. He has also published a biography of Niccolò Machiavelli and edited a collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s fables, jokes, and riddles. He is the co-author with Anja Grebe of Florence: The Paintings & Frescoes, 1250-1743 (2015), the most comprehensive (and probably the heaviest) book ever undertaken on the art of Florence.

His latest book, Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies published in September 2016, marks his return to French Impressionism ten years after his award-winning The Judgement of Paris.

Ross serves on the Council of Academic Advisors for Friends of Florence, the fund-raising charity ensuring the survival of Florence’s art and architectural treasures. He has participated in numerous Friends of Florence study tours throughout Italy, including in Rome, Assisi, and Milan. He is a regular participant in the Italian Renaissance seminars at the Aspen Institute, including programmes on Giotto, St. Francis, and Dante. He has appeared in a number of television documentaries, such as The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (PBS, 2003), Raphael: A Mortal God (BBC, 2004), The Great Cathedral Mystery (Nova, 2014), and Florence’s Invisible City (BBC, 2016).

He has lectured in many American museums, including the Smithsonian, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Frick Collection, and the National Gallery of Art. When not traveling for work or pleasure, he lives near Oxford, in England, with his wife Melanie.

Stéphanie Jeanjean

Stéphanie Jeanjean is an art historian and curator. She teaches Art History at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York. She is a regular lecturer, in English and French, at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Stéphanie is a French native, born in Langres, a small historic town in Champagne-Ardennes in North Eastern France. She graduated from Bourgogne University in Dijon and completed a Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. She curated exhibitions involving French artists, most recently at A. A. Wallace Gallery at SUNY College of Old Westbury, at the Brecht Forum in Brooklyn, and at the Kitchen in New York. She presented on French Art at numerous conferences worldwide, including Tate Britain, London (UK); KAIST University, Daejeon (South Korea), Brown and Cornell Universities, at MIT, and CAA annual conferences in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago (USA), among others. Her work on French militant video has been published in Afterall Journal, and reprinted in Hilary Robinson ed., Feminism Art Theory (Wiley & Blackwell Editions, Oxford, 2015). Some of her work on Sociological Art, has been published in François Bovier and Adeena Mey eds., Exhibited Cinema an Anthology, by ECAL and JRP Ringier Editions, (Lausanne and Zurich, 2016). Stephanie last curated project WE DISSENT: Design of the Women's Movement in New York, at 41 Cooper Gallery in New York, presented the work of more than 130 women artists and collectives (listed "10 Under-the-Radar Art Show" by Roberta Smith, The New York Times, Nov. 2018).