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.

Hamish Scott

Hamish Scott is a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and Wardlaw Professor Emeritus of International History at the University of St Andrews. A Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he has published extensively on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century international relations, on enlightened absolutism and on nobility. Among his publications are The Emergence of the Eastern Powers 1756-75 (Cambridge, 2001) and The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740-1815 (Harlow, 2007); most recently he edited The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, c.1350-1750 (2 vols.; Oxford, 2015). Hamish is currently completing a major study entitled Forming Aristocracy: The Reconfiguration of Europe’s Nobilities, c.1300-1750.

Margaret Monnier

Margaret Monnier is an expert on the Iberian Peninsula and has been living in Spain for the past 25 years.  She has a Masters degree in History from the University of Granada focusing on the coexistence between Jews, Muslims, and Christians during the Medieval period on the Peninsula. For twenty years she has been sharing her knowledge of and passion for Spain and Portugal in the field of educational travel, lecturing for various University programs and at cultural conferences. Her areas of expertise also include the Basque Country, Portuguese history and the Pilgrimage to Santiago.

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Margaret also studied Modern Standard Arabic.  Her experience and knowledge Spanish and Portuguese History is as rich and varied as that of the contemporary daily life and cultural details on the Iberian Peninsula.

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.

Rafael Chacón

H. Rafael Chacón is Professor of Art History and Criticism at The University of Montana-Missoula where he lectures on a broad range of art historical subjects. He received his doctorate in art history with honors from the University of Chicago, having been awarded numerous research fellowships to study in Europe, including an award from the Spanish Ministry of Culture for his dissertation on Michelangelism in Renaissance sculpture. He has written on a range of topics related to Renaissance and baroque art, both in Europe and in the Americas, most recently focusing on revival style architecture in the U.S. Northwest during the late 19th century. Rafael has been an expert for many Smithsonian Journeys programs in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe.

Brian Aivars Catlos

Brian A. Catlos earned a PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and currently holds appointments as Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Research Associate in Humanities at the University of California Santa Cruz. His work centers on Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations and ethno-religious identity in medieval Europe and the Islamic World, and the history of the pre-Modern Mediterranean. A board member of various academic journals, he also co-directs The Mediterranean Seminar, a major initiative and a forum for international and interdisciplinary collaboration in the emerging field of Mediterranean Studies, and directs the CU Mediterranean Studies Group at Boulder. He has published a number of books and articles including the The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050–1300 (Cambridge, 2004 *Premio del Rey & John E. Fagg Prize), Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 1050–ca. 1615 (Cambridge, 2014 *Hourani Book Prize), and Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Power Faith and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014 *PROSE Award, hon. mention). Awards and distinctions include the Governor-General of Canada's Gold Medal for Academic Achievement, two National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowships, and many other universities, national and international fellowships and prizes. In July 2015, he co-directed his fourth four-week NEH Summer Institute for College and University Professors in Barcelona, Spain. His next book, Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain will be published by Basic Books in May 2018.