Rate My Professor Ryan Smith

Ryan K. Smith, Ph.D., serves as a Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he has been a faculty member since 2004. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in American Civilization from the University of Delaware and a Master’s degree in History from the College of William and Mary. Prior to his appointment at VCU, Smith held positions at cultural institutions such as the Library of Virginia, Winterthur Museum, the St. Augustine Historical Society, and the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, gaining expertise in historic preservation and public history.

Smith specializes in U.S. history, with particular focus on American religious history, material culture, historic preservation, and public history. His major publications include three monographs: Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century (The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), which examines anti-Catholic influences on nineteenth-century church architecture; Robert Morris’s Folly: The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder (Yale University Press, 2014), an architectural biography of the Revolutionary financier Robert Morris detailing his financial downfall and unfinished Philadelphia mansion; and Death and Rebirth in a Southern City: Richmond’s Historic Cemeteries (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), a comprehensive study of over 300 years of Richmond’s burial grounds, including sites like Shockoe Bottom African burial grounds, Hollywood Cemetery, and Evergreen Cemetery, addressing racial exclusion, Confederate memory, and contemporary preservation through archival research, oral histories, photography, and student collaborations, supported by a companion public website. Current research projects encompass the reclamation of historic U.S. lighthouses, Shaker furniture, and nineteenth-century body snatching landscapes. Smith contributes to public history via digital projects like The Judah Will, coauthored with students, and teaches courses such as HIST 490 on Richmond’s cemeteries featuring field trips.