My name’s Tad Suiter. I’m a PhD candidate in History at George Mason University. I’m an Americanist, with a primary focus on the convergence of media, communication, technology, and culture in 19th and 20th century America. I also have a minor field in History and New Media.

My dissertation research deals with the first few decades of the daily newspaper comics page, as a localized urban phenomenon that quickly became ubiquitous nationally, and how those changes effected the form and content of the comics. It’s a really fun project and I get to read comics and feel like I’m being responsible. I’m basically living the (geeky) dream.

I also have a strong interest in museums and public history, something that was encouraged by a year-plus stint working at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, as an assistant curator in the History department. I worked on a new exhibit called Systems At Work, about the history of mail processing technology. It was both a blast and an honor to get to work for the Smithsonian, and the Postal Museum was a great place to do further research about media and communications.

More recently, I’ve had the opportunity to work at the Virginia Room of the Arlington Public Library, where I help to strategize and implement digital initiatives. Getting in at (almost) the ground floor of a local history archive’s digitization process has been a great opportunity to combine my interest in public history with my love of the Digital Humanities. It’s a challenging job, at times, but the work is fun.

When I get sick of computers and dead people, I try to teach myself the ukulele, hunt down old out-of-print Soul and R’n'B, and have an unhealthy relationship with Twitter.