NIAHD Required Courses

Public History (HIST 409) or Public History in the 21st Century (HIST 411)

These courses consider the many ways that the public interacts with information about the American past, primarily using Colonial Williamsburg and the W&M campus as a laboratory for study. Because Colonial Williamsburg contains many types of museum approaches including first-person interpretation, third-person interpretation, trade displays, and curatorial displays, these classes are able to interrogate the methods, relevance, issues. and questions of public history. 

Field Schools:  Architectural History (HIST 406) or Material Culture (HIST 407) or Archaeological Field Methods (ANTH 225) or related Field School 

These courses provide students with hands-on research opportunities to investigate the built environment or artifacts, and the people who made them, through direct investigation and practical field exercises. Through field work, readings, and lectures, students learn to identify, analyze, document, and interpret the material past on its own terms and in light of contemporary questions.

NIAHD Internship in Public History (HIST 408) 

Students first work with NIAHD's Director to define their internship goals, identify a supervisor, and complete their application materials, and then have intermittent reflective and responsive course meetings that center questions of professional development. Internships may be in any public history field relevant to the intern, e.g. historical interpretation, research, writing, archiving, programming, archaeology, historic trades.

It is possible for students to complete internship hours during the summer and to have year-long internships if they make arrangements with NIAHD staff.