William Keylor

Bill Keylor is Professor of History and International Relations in the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, where he served four consecutive terms as chairman of the Department of History from 1988 to 2000 and currently directs the University’s International History Institute. Bill received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his M.A. and Ph.D in European History from Columbia University.  He has been the recipient of Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, and Guggenheim Fellowships and was named Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite by the French Government. He has also received three teaching awards at Boston University.

Bill has lived and worked France, has served as a consultant to the Museum of Peace at Caen, and has been a visiting professor of the Institute of Political Studies of Paris (Sciences-Po). He has lectured on many Smithsonian tours and cruises since the late 1970s. 

Bill’s publications include dozens of articles and book chapters as well as two books on the history of France.  He is also the author of The Twentieth-Century World: An International History (6th edition, Oxford University Press, 2011) and A World of Nations: The International Order since World War II  (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2009).

Cassandra Potts Hannahs

Cassandra Potts Hannahs has enjoyed leading Smithsonian groups to Great Britain, France, and Ireland since 2000.  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.

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.

Janetta Rebold Benton

Janetta Rebold Benton is the Distinguished Professor of Art History at Pace University, New York. She has lectured for many years at the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has served as the speaker on trips worldwide for both institutions. A former resident of Paris, she was Visiting Professor in the graduate school of art history at European University in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in the graduate school of art history at China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, on two Fulbright Senior Scholar Awards in 2012 and 2018.

Dr. Benton is the author of eight art history books (with translations into French and Chinese), as well as numerous scholarly articles and reviews published in Austria, China, Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, and the U.S. She holds degrees/diploma from Harvard University, Brown University, George Washington University, and Cornell University.

Kim Munholland

Kim Munholland is Professor Emeritus from the University of Minnesota where he taught courses on modern European history and modern France for 42 years. He is a graduate of Stanford University and received his masters and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University. Kim traveled and resided in France for nearly eight years during his research leaves from the University of Minnesota. He has published books and articles on French history with an emphasis on French-American relations in the 20th century and issues of French identity, including the importance of wine as part of French culture. For the past eight years he has taught a history of Paris course for University of Minnesota students in Paris, which included trips to Normandy and Mt. St. Michel, and he has offered several adult-learning seminars on French history and World War II topics.