December, 2023
from the Record, Fall 2023
by Alexandra Evans
The Keepers: Alumni in Public History
Set in what Caroline Emmons, director of the Center for Public History, calls a “laboratory of history,” Hampden-Sydney has always drawn historophiles. Emmons credits this to a number of factors including the position of the College both geographically and temporally in our nation’s history as well as the strength of the Hampden-Sydney History Department.
“Over the past 10 years, Hampden-Sydney College has graduated more history majors as a share of students than any other college or university in the nation. According to The American Historical Association, approximately 1.2 percent of undergraduates nationally majored in history between 2012 and 2022. Hampden-Sydney’s average across those ten years is 13.6 percent,” reports Elliott Associate Professor of History James Frusetta.
Discover how Nathan Ryalls ’11, guest experience and design manager at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, is using his history major in his profession dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and conservation of American history.
While volunteering as a docent at Jamestown Settlement in high school, Nathan Ryalls ’11 discovered that he really enjoyed making history exciting and relevant to the general public. Ryalls was encouraged by Jamestown curator Daniel Hawks ’61 to consider Hampden-Sydney despite there being no formal public history or museum studies program at the time. Emmons actually credits Ryalls with the idea for establishing the Center for Public History.
“Nathan rightly pointed out that H-SC is well situated for the study of history given its physical and intellectual location at the crossroads of many important moments in American history, from the nation’s founding to the Civil War to the civil rights movement,” Emmons says.
At Hawks’ suggestion, Ryalls began working with Director-Curator of the Atkinson Museum Angie Way from the moment he stepped on campus and continued all four years, going on to serve on the board of the Museum after graduating.
After completing his master’s degree in history at James Madison University, Ryalls has made a career out of just what called him to public history in the first place: making history exciting to the public. As guest experience and design manager at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Ryalls works to streamline the guest experience at Colonial Williamsburg, liaising with various guest-facing departments such as the tradespeople, museum theater actors, and nation builder characters to create programming and schedules that create a cohesive narrative experience for the guests.
Once bringing in over a million visitors a year, Colonial Williamsburg has experienced a drastic drop in guests coming through the park, which Ryalls laments. Though, he relishes the challenge of keeping it a premier destination. To do this, Ryalls and his team are taking age old topics like democracy, freedom, revolution, ingenuity, and community and inviting visitors to create links between the circumstances surrounding these topics in 18th century Colonial America and their places in today’s world. “Interpretation is, at its core, provocation. We want our guests to find relevant ties to their own lives and then to be active participants in their community,” Ryalls explains. “That goes beyond just voting; it’s being active in the PTA and your church and the farmers’ market. Trying to improve community life.”
“History is not done and dusted,” Ryalls says. “It’s an evolving field with new questions and new stories emerging and new ways we can learn from the past.”