About Me
Hi, I'm Susan. I have been a history major since about the age of eight. I don't remember which happened first, but in second grade the American Girls dolls debuted (I was a Samantha), and around the same time my parents took us for our ritual Friday night stroll at the Cherry Hill Mall (NJ), circa 1986. They happened to be tabling antiques one evening, and I fell in love with a skeleton key that was offered for fifty cents. My dad bought me that key that Friday night instead of the Popple or Barbie I might have had at KB Toys. Today, I show that key to my students as a tangible, "nuministic" tie to the past, a tie to the material culture that I had no words to describe at that point, but which felt real.
When I was about thirteen, my family went on a vacation to Colonial Williamsburg. I fell in love on sight, and immediately determined that I was going to attend the College of William & Mary, any way, any how. I was lucky enough to get in, but even as I studied my historical passions (the Tudors) I missed exactly what it was that made Williamsburg such a magical, spiritual home for me. It wasn't until fifteen years later on a visit back, and after I had already been working as a special collections librarian and archivist, that I realized....The interpretation of history for the public, not historians writing for other historians, was what motivated me, and why Colonial Williamsburg had called out to me all those years ago. Public history, captivating kids like I had been, inviting them into the windows of the past, was the best conveyance of the historical nuance I loved.
For the past dozen+ years, I have been an archivist and special collection librarian. I have a background in auctions, antiquarian bookselling, reference librarianship, and currently, I helm the Special Collections & University Archives department at Bucknell University. I have constant intellectual stimulation at my day job, but I continue to be drawn down the rabbit hole to obscure human narratives--stories--that seem to find me for some reason, for exploration and retelling.