Barbara Whitehead

Barbara J. Whitehead is the A. W. Crandall Professor of History at DePauw University and former Chair of the History Department. She earned her AB in History at Harvard University and her PhD in History from Bryn Mawr College. This educational background fostered a love of early modern Europe that has been the focus of her teaching and writing for over thirty years. At DePauw, Barbara has developed a broad spectrum of courses centered on European history ranging from the Viking Age and Crusades to the European witch hunts, the French Revolution, and the history of happiness. Her research in intellectual history has led to an edited volume on early modern women’s education and publications on forgotten figures of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In addition to leading over fifteen academic tours of Europe, Barbara has served as the on-site director of the American Colleges of the Midwest Central European Studies Program in the Czech Republic, where she taught European history. She also taught in the Danish International Studies Program in Copenhagen as a visiting professor. In addition to living in the Czech Republic and Denmark, Barbara has also lived in Rome and Paris.

Charles Ingrao

Charlie Ingrao, a popular Smithsonian Journeys Expert, is professor emeritus of history at Purdue University, where he has taught a broad range of courses on the European world and its overseas empires. He has published thirteen books and given over a hundred public lectures to academic, governmental, and military audiences on five continents. His scholarship has been published in seven European languages. Charles has also been a regular commentator for print, radio, and television media, including The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (PBS).

Madeline Díaz

Madeline Díaz has expertise in art history and museum studies and more than 15 years of experience creating and leading programs for museums and cultural institutions. She has worked for The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Cloisters, the Frick Collection, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the Smithsonian Latino Center for which she currently serves as consultant. She develops and leads education programs for several French cultural institutions, including the Grand Palais, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, and the Mona Bismarck American Center. She also teaches museum education and cultural mediation at the University of Versailles. Madeline has traveled extensively through Spain, Italy, and France and has a passion for art, photography, languages and flamenco. Madeline holds a BA from Brown University and an MA from Columbia University. 

Janetta Rebold Benton

Janetta Rebold Benton is the Distinguished Professor of Art History at Pace University, New York. She has lectured for many years at the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has served as the speaker on trips worldwide for both institutions. A former resident of Paris, she was Visiting Professor in the graduate school of art history at European University in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in the graduate school of art history at China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, on two Fulbright Senior Scholar Awards in 2012 and 2018.

Dr. Benton is the author of ten art history books (with translations into multiple languages), as well as numerous scholarly articles and reviews published in Austria, China, Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, and the U.S. She holds degrees/diploma from Harvard University, Brown University, George Washington University, and Cornell University.

Cassandra Potts Hannahs

Cassandra Potts Hannahs is a historian with special expertise in Celtic, Viking, and Anglo-Norman studies. She has enjoyed traveling with Smithsonian Journeys on more than 50 tours and cruises, sharing her passion and knowledge of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.

With a Ph.D. in medieval history, she was a tenured professor at Middlebury College in Vermont, where she taught courses on a wide range of subjects, from ancient history through the Reformation.  A Fulbright scholar and recipient of several grants, she has also spent considerable time living in France pursuing research.  Her publications include a book exploring the Viking settlement of Normandy in northern France during the 10th and 11th centuries, and the revival of monasticism that took place as the new rulers encouraged monks to return to the region after the Viking raids. 

In her research and lectures, Cassandra explores the cultural and political exchanges that have historically linked Britain, France, Ireland, and Scandinavia. She looks forward to sharing her love and knowledge of these lands, their history, music, and literature, with Smithsonian Journeys travelers.

Stéphanie Jeanjean

Stéphanie Jeanjean is an art historian, curator, and translator. She currently teaches Art History at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and in the Master's Program in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, in New York. She is also an educator working with The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and MoMA in New York.

Native to France, Stéphanie was born in Langres, a culturally rich historical small town in the Champagne-Ardennes region (in North-Eastern France), where she gained an early interest in the relationship between art, culture, and human activities throughout historical periods. She pursued Art History degrees, first at the Université de Bourgogne, in Dijon (Burgundy) and then by completing a Ph.D. in Art History at the CUNY (The City University of New York) Graduate Center.

Stéphanie presented her work at conferences worldwide, including Tate Britain, London (UK); KAIST University, Daejeon (South Korea), Brown and Cornell Universities, at MIT, and CAA annual conferences in Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago (USA), and at Sorbonne Université (Paris 1), among others. Her work on French militant video has been published in Afterall Journal, and reprinted in Hilary Robinson’s anthology, Feminism Art Theory (Wiley & Blackwell Editions, Oxford, 2015). Her work on Sociological Art has been published in: François Bovier and Adeena Mey eds., Exhibited Cinema an Anthology, by ECAL and JRP Ringier Editions, (Lausanne and Zurich, 2016). Her recent publication, “Le multiple politique : Études sur le potentiel d’un médium, comme processus et mode d’action,” is available online, in French, on Plastik (Paris: La Sorbonne, No. 12, 2023). Last, Stéphanie major curated project is WE DISSENT: Design of the Women's Movement in New York (at 41 Cooper Gallery in New York), which presented the work by more than 130 women artists and women’s collectives active in New York. It was listed as "10 Under-the-Radar Art Show" in The New York Times (by Roberta Smith, Nov. 2018) and is accessible here: www.wedissent.space