Joseph J. and Susan Arpad collection

Dr. Susan Smith Arpad was born April 23, 1937, in Wilmington, Delaware, to Montford and Lillian (Eddleston) Smith. She graduated from Wilmington Friends School in 1955. She received her bachelor's degree from Smith College, her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Delaware, concluding her studies in 1974. After brief history teaching positions at Wesley College in Dover, Delaware, and George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Susan became a professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in 1975. In 1982, at the request of Governor Richard Celeste, she founded the first Women's Studies program in the state of Ohio, among the first in the nation. Dr. Arpad resigned from the BGSU program in January 1985. In 1986, she became the Chair of the Women's Studies Department at California State University, Fresno (CSUF), one of the largest such departments in the nation. During her academic career, she published several books and many articles, including Make a Joyful Noise unto the Lord: Hymns as a Reflection of Victorian Social Attitudes (1978) and Sam Curd's Diary: The Diary of a True Woman (1984), as well as many book reviews in Choice and other journals. In 1990, Susan received a Summer Fulbright Fellowship to observe the transition in government in Hungary with the fall of the Soviet Union. That same year, she began participating in a CSUF London Semester Abroad program, which involved taking 20 to 30 students on educational tours of England. In 1991-92, she and her husband, Dr. Joseph Arpad, taught Fulbright courses in Budapest, Szeged, and Debrecen, Hungary. She again joined her husband in teaching Fulbright courses in Riga, Latvia, in 1996-98. Upon retiring from CSUF in 1999, Susan became very active in Habitat for Humanity in the Central Valley of California, obtaining federal grants to build farmworkers and other low-income family housing. During this time, she directed the first Habitat for Humanity Women's Build, where women construct an entire house with their newly acquired skills. In 2004, upon moving with her husband Joe to Wadsworth, Ohio, she began another career as a community organizer and volunteer grant writer for local non-profits.

Susan Apard married Joseph Arpad in 1977 and raised two sons before she died on April 7, 2014 from multiple myeloma.

Little information is found on Joseph J. Arpad, but his collection of scholarly books and articles is extensive. Dr. J. Arpad wrote about the Ohio gas and oil boom, the Midwestern heritage of glass making, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and the Great Black Swamp. Drs. Joseph and Susan Apard wrote the book Southern Wood County oral history project: conducted 1965-1972 by Max Shaffer and conducted 1977-1989 by Joseph J. Arpad and Susan S. Arpad in 1994. This publication contains the transcripts of 163 oral interviewers who remembered the ‘Oil Boom Era’ of the late 19th century and life in southern Wood Count in the early 20th Century. These transcripts and original tapes are included in this Center for Archival Collection’s (CAC) collection.

Joseph J. Arpad served on the faculty of BGSU from 1977-1987, with appointments in the Department of Popular Culture and the Department of English. and later serving on the faculty at CSU Fresno from 1987-1999. While at BGSU, he wrote about and participated in the production of documentaries about the Ohio gas and oil boom, the Midwestern heritage of glass making, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and the Great Black Swamp. He and Susan Arpad wrote the book Southern Wood County oral history project: conducted 1965-1972 by Max Shaffer and conducted 1977-1989 by Joseph J. Arpad and Susan S. Arpad in 1994. This publication contains the transcripts of 163 oral interviewers who remembered the ‘Oil Boom Era’ of the late 19th century and life in southern Wood Count in the early 20th Century. These transcripts and original tapes are included in this collection.