Faculty

Susan Ferentinos

Public Historian and S104 Faculty

Phone: (812) 855-8726
E-mail: sferenti@indiana.edu
Office: 112 N Bryan Ave
Office Hours: 4-6 p.m. Mondays, IMU Gallery First Floor

After earning her bachelor’s degree in international studies from the College of William and Mary, Susan Ferentinos worked stints as a social worker, a low-income housing administrator, and a farm hand before discovering her love of libraries and history. She earned her Masters of Library Science from Indiana University in 1998 and her PhD in history in 2005. She is the Public History Manager for the Organization of American Historians, where she oversees a program building bridges between universities and national parks. Her job enables her to teach historians the skills of collaboration and to contribute to the National Park Service’s effort to bring the latest historical research to the American public.

Running throughout all these adventures is an enduring interest in the ways people find their place within a larger community. The same questions are evident in Susan’s research. She is currently working on a book about the way teenagers’ emerging sense of identity shaped consumption in the early 20th century, and is developing an exhibit on the history of a local cultural institution, the Indiana Theatre, a movie palace that opened on Kirkwood Avenue in 1922 and continues operation today as the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.