Stephen Clancy

Stephen Clancy is an art historian with special expertise in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance art and architecture. A popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, he has led more than 15 tours and cruises through the Mediterranean region and northern Europe.

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 a lecturer on numerous tours over the past twenty-two years in the Mediterranean and in northern Europe, from Scandinavia to Russia.

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.

Linda Ehrlich

Dr. Ehrlich has introduced Spanish and Catalan films at the Guggenheim Museum (N.Y.), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), University of Miami, the Cleveland Cinematheque, and the Cinematheque Ontario (Toronto).  She writes and lectures on art history as well.

She been an invited speaker at the symposium on Catalan Cinema held at the Stanford Humanities Center. In Spain she has spoken at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), the University of Girona, and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid). 

Her book on a noted Spanish director--The Cinema of Víctor Erice: An Open Window--appeared in the Scarecrow Press Filmmakers series. Her taped commentary on The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena, dir. Víctor Erice, 1973) appears on the Criterion DVD. In addition, she has edited the memoirs of sculptor/filmmaker Juan Luis Buñuel, eldest son of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel. She is fascinated by cultural ties between Portugal and Japan (her other specialty).

Dr. Ehrlich has been a Visiting Faculty member of Duke University, Associate Professor Emerita at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio), and Visiting Faculty on two Semester-at-Sea voyages. 

You can learn more about Dr. Ehrlich at http://braidednarrative.com/bio

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.

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.