I am Associate Professor in the Department of History at American University, where I research and teach U.S. cultural history and public history theory and practice. I am the author of History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s (UNC Press, 2017) as well as numerous articles in scholarly and general interest publications.
I’m an interdisciplinary-trained public historian who has written extensively on American culture. I’m also active in local history through longstanding roles with the annual D.C. History Conference, HumanitiesDC, and Washington History Magazine. In 2023-4, I was Humanities Scholar-In-Residence at Heurich House Museum and Humanities Truck Fellow. I currently hold the Us@250 Fellowship at New America.
As someone who came to Washington at the age of four as a political refugee from Poland and who believes that this city is both misunderstood and underestimated, this is also a history that is personally important to me.
You can reach me at rymszapa at american dot edu.
