Jim Curtis received his BA in German from Vanderbilt University and his PhD in Russian from Columbia University. He taught Russian for 31 years at the University of Missouri and is now a Professor Emeritus from that institution.

Dr. Curtis is the author of seven books including "Culture as Polyphony" and "Solzhenitsyn's Traditional Imagination" as well as numerous essays and blogs. His most recent book "Chekhov, the Anxious Playwright," is forthcoming from Routledge Publishers in London.

Dr. Curtis now lives in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania with his wife Donna. He is an art educator and lectures widely in the area. He served as a destination speaker on 11 cruises for Oceania Cruise Lines. He prepared numerous lectures on art and architecture for those cruises, and has supplemented those lectures with new ones such as the most recent lecture "The Christmas Story in Art."

America
Appreciating Norman Rockwell
Andrew Wyeth in Chadds Ford: Art in a Grain of Sand
The Essential Genius of Georgia O’Keefe
Pennsylvania’s Mary Cassatt, America’s First Great Woman Artist
The Architecture of Frank Gehry
Outsiders Becoming Insiders: Jewish Songwriters and the Broadway Musical

France
Mont St. Michel and the Medieval Cathedral

Spain
Gaudi’s Barcelona and Barcelona’s Gaudi
Spanish History Through Spanish Art and Architecture

Italy
The Villas and Gardens of Italy
Pompeii and Herculaneum
The Hill Towns of Tuscany
Venice, the Floating City

Mediterranean
Ephesus
In the Footsteps of Jesus

Northern Europe
Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vermeer

Russia
The Art and Architecture of St. Petersburg
Russian Women Painters
Russian Impressionism Today
Contemporary Russian Architecture

China
The Great Wall and the Terra Cotta Warriors
Growing Tea and Making Silk in China

Japan
Old Meets new in Today’s Japan

General
The Christmas Story in Art

I have served as a destination speaker on 11 Oceania cruises, and am an experienced art educator. I give frequent art lectures at retirement communities in the local area.
I have a portfolio of about 30 topics for which I have prepared Power Point lectures, and am eager to create new ones.