Charles Ingrao

Charlie Ingrao, a popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, is professor emeritus of history at Purdue University, where he has taught a wide range of courses on the European world. Several of his thirteen books focus on German history, including The Hessian Mercenary State and The Germans & the East. Two Fulbrights and a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation have enabled him to spend more than three years living and working in German-speaking Europe.

Ana Maria Afzali

Ana Afzali was born in Madrid and lived there until 1984.  She earned her Masters Degree and PHD in Spanish Languages and Literature from UCLA.  As a Historian and Medievalist, she has conducted research on the history and literature of both Spain and Portugal.  She currently serves as a tenured instructor at Citrus College in Los Angeles teaching Spanish language and culture courses.  Dr. Afzali brings over 27 years of experience in the teaching of Spanish Language, Literature and History. She has traveled through Spain and Portugal extensively where she is well regarded as an expert Spanish Medievalist. Professor Afzali is the recipient of the Del Amo Fellowship for her research in Medieval Literature in Spain in 1995.

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.