Dianne Konz

Since 1992, Dianne Konz has led several Smithsonian Journeys groups to Spain and Portugal. She has taught Spanish literature, language, and civilization at the University of Texas at Austin and at The George Washington University. She has also lectured and published studies on Spanish and Latin American literature, and Spanish culture. Dianne'’s enthusiasm for Iberia grew from her experiences living and studying in Madrid. Her particular passion is the integration of the cultural arts in the context of their time. She approaches art and architecture, literature, music, and gastronomy as a reflection of a country'’s history, politics, and geography. Dianne's teachings of Spanish history and civilization include the Moorish and Islamic periods invasion, conquest, and occupation of Iberia, and the rich cultural heritage of the Islamic presence in Iberia.

Albert Leonard

Albert Leonard Jr. is Professor Emeritus in both the Departments of Classical Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona. Al is an archaeologist who specializes in the social impact of interregional trade among the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean world. For more than four decades, he has directed excavations at a number of sites in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Egypt, Cyprus, Israel and Jordan. Throughout his career, Al has been active in educational outreach and, in 2006, the Archaeological Institute of America awarded him its Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award by which it “acknowledged and applauded the invaluable service that [he] has given to the archaeological community as an educator.”

As his alter ego, the Time Traveling Gourmet, Al combines his command of archaeological, historical, and literary material with culinary skills acquired at Le Cordon Bleu as well as the Culinary Institute of America (partially supported by a Robert A. Parker Wine Advocate Scholarship) in order to reconstruct (in the classroom or the kitchen) dishes described by such ancient authors as Archestratus of Syracuse, a 4th-century B.C. Sicilian cook who has often been called the “Father of Gastronomy.” Al presently divides his time between Boston, where he is a Research Associate at the Harvard Semitic Museum, and California’s Russian River Valley, where he is a member of The Society of Wine Educators and the Northern Sonoma County convivium of Slow Foods International.