Marta Staudinger

Marta Staudinger is an artist, art historian and curator. She is the Director and Founder of the Latela Art Gallery in Washington DC, voted DC's Best Commercial Art Gallery in 2016. Marta travels three to four times a year lecturing for Smithsonian Journeys in Italy, Portugal and Spain - countries where she also organizes exhibitions and manages artists. She received her B.A. from George Mason University in Art History specializing in Italian Renaissance, Italian Baroque and European Modernism. Prior to founding the Latela Art Gallery, Marta worked on archival and curatorial projects in many museums in Florence, Italy including the National Bargello Museum, Medici Chapels, and Casa Martelli; in Barcelona at the Antoni Tàpies Foundation; and in Washington DC at the National Gallery of Art as the Samuel H. Kress Archivist. Additionally, Marta lectured on Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art to international scholars and visitors in Florence for many years and led private tours around the city. A former resident of Florence, Marta left Italy to pursue her M.A. in Barcelona at the Universitat de Ramon Llull in Curatorial Studies. Fluent in English, Italian, and Spanish, she led private tours in Barcelona focusing on art and architecture from Spanish Modernism and Contemporary Culture. 

Lawrence Butler

Dr. Butler received his BA and MA from Oberlin College and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.  Trained as an art historian of Medieval Europe, the Mediterranean and Islamic world, Butler’s teaching and scholarly interests now range across pre-modern Eurasia, including the Silk Road connections between the Mediterranean world and East Asia. While at George Mason University he served as director of the Art History program, and as Coordinator of the Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology minor.

Dr. Butler has taught at GMU and Hiram College and has also held research positions at a number of museums. He was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Turkey in 1982-83. He has been an active participant in the Semester at Sea program, taking students on academic study tours around the world.  He was the visiting lecturer in Art History on the Fall 1999, Summer 2004, and Fall 2009 voyages.  On the Summer 2011 voyage, he was the Global Studies lecturer.

In 2004, Dr. Butler was awarded George Mason University’s Teaching Excellence Award and in 2005 he was elected to Phi Beta Delta, the honorary society for international education.  He lectures frequently for the Smithsonian Associates on the arts and cultural history of Spain and Portugal, Turkey, China, and many other places in between.

Francisco García-Serrano

Francisco García-Serrano  earned his M.A and Ph.D. in Medieval Iberian History at the University of California, Berkeley and is currently a professor of History in the Department of Humanities at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus.  In addition, he has been a visiting professor at U.C. Berkeley, New York University in Madrid, and Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan.

His research focuses on the influence of the Mendicant Orders in Spain during the late Middle Ages and on religious identity and interfaith relations. Francisco García-Serrano has published Preachers of the City. The Expansion of the Dominican Order in Castile, 1217-1348 (University Press of the South, 1997), and his most recent contributions to collective books include “Del convento al palacio: los frailes y las oligarquías castellanas (siglos XIII-XIV)”, in Isabel Beceiro Pita, dir., Poder, piedad y devoción. Castilla y su entorno (siglos XII-XV) (Silex, Madrid, 2014), and “The Mendicants as a Mediterranean Phenomenon,” in Taryn Chubb and Emily Kelly, ed., Mendicants and Merchants in the Medieval Mediterranean (Brill, 2013). His current book project, The Friars and Their Impact in Medieval Iberia, contains the collaboration of fifteen international specialists.

Professor García-Serrano also serves as the Director of Ibero-American Studies at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus, an academic program that he created. In addition he is the current president of the interdisciplinary association AHLiST (2012-2015) and has organized a number of international conferences.

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.

Ruth MacKay

Ruth MacKay is a historian with special expertise in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and a former journalist.  She has a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, where she was a lecturer.  Dr. MacKay worked as a writer and editor for Stanford University, where she was also a visiting scholar. She has published three books on various aspects of early modern Iberia as well as a wide range of academic articles. Dr. MacKay lived in Spain during the 1980s, the famed “transition to democracy” -- a subject she also has written about -- and she returns often to conduct research and visit her former home.

Michael Ryan

Michael A. Ryan is an associate professor of medieval and early modern history at the University of New Mexico. He earned his doctorate in 2005 from the University of Minnesota, where he studied under two of the preeminent historians of premodern Spain, William D. Phillips, Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips. He is a specialist in the social, cultural, and intellectual history of late medieval Spain, Italy, and the Mediterranean Basin with thematic foci on the histories of apocalypticism and magic. The author of A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon, Michael is currently working on a new book in which he studies the parameters of magical-themed fraud and trickery in Venice during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. He is also the co-creator and co-editor of a new academic monograph series published by Penn State University Press, Iberian Encounter and Exchange, 475-1755. His first sojourn in Spain was in 1995 and he adores the languages, histories, cultures, and cuisines of the Iberian Peninsula.

Ana Maria Afzali

Ana Afzali is a medievalist who specializes in the history and literature of both Spain and Portugal. She is a tenured Professor at Citrus College in Southern California teaching Spanish culture, literature and language courses.

Ana is a scholar of the Iberian Renaissance and she has published extensively on the political and cultural history and literature of Spain and Portugal. She is also the author of the book “Modern Spain” (2009).  Ana has earned both her Masters and Doctorate in Spanish literature and languages from University of California, Los Angeles where she taught for four years.

A native of Madrid, she has traveled and lectured extensively through Spain and Portugal and she is the recipient of numerous academic awards.

Allen James Fromherz

Dr. Allen Fromherz is a Professor of Mediterranean and Middle East History at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth College in 2002 and received his PhD from St. Andrews University in Scotland in Medieval Islamic History in 2006. His first two books, The Almohads: the Rise of an Islamic Empire (IB Tauris) and Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times (Edinburgh University Press) examine the rise of empire in medieval North Africa and Iberia. Dr. Fromherz's most recently completed work The Near West: North Africa and Europe (Edinburgh – Expected end of 2016), examines the history of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish interactions across the Western Mediterranean, especially in Iberia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Italy.  Dr. Fromherz has held several international fellowships from Fulbright, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, and a senior fellowship from NYU Abu Dhabi. Dr. Fromherz has led and organized four study abroads, including the popular Marvels of Medieval Spain: the Culture and History of Muslims, Jews, and Christians. His regular classes on Medieval Spain and the Mediterranean focus on convivencia, how Muslims, Jews, and Christians, living together, created a common culture that still lives on in Iberia to this day.