Smulyan taught at University of Texas at San Antonio from 1985 until 1988, when she joined the Department of American Civilization (later renamed American Studies) at Brown University.[4] She is professor of American Studies and director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown.[5]
Smulyan's work focuses on popular culture in the United States in the 20th century. Her first book, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934, described the rise of advertising on the medium of radio.[6][7] Reviewing the book for the journal American Journalism, William James Ryan suggested that Smulyan made an important contribution in documenting the historical contingency (rather than inevitability) of this development: that, per Ryan, "American radio did not need to become what it became."[8] In The Business History Review, Regina Lee Blaszczyk emphasized Smulyan's "savvy borrowing of research methods and theories from several fields" to develop this investigation.[9]
Smulyan has also served as chair of the board of directors of New Urban Arts, a youth mentoring program in Rhode Island.[10]
In July 2020, Routledge published Smulyan's Doing Public Humanities, an edited collection of essays, which "explores the cultural landscape from disruptive events to websites, from tours to exhibits, from after school arts programs to archives", providing a broad perspective of the work of public humanities.[11] This work builds on Smulyan's tenure as the director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University and features case studies written by other scholars affiliated with the Center.[12]
Like Smulyan's earlier work, Doing Public Humanities is interdisciplinary and combines a practitioner's focus on case studies with the scholar's more abstract and theoretical approach. Smulyan's own essay, "What Can the Public Arts Teach the Public Humanities", draws on her work with an after school arts program in Providence, RI—New Urban Arts.[2] Other contributors present a public humanities practice that encourages social justice and explores the intersectionalities of race, class, gender, and sexualities.[12]
^"Smulyan, Susan". vivo.brown.edu. Brown University. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
^Benjamin, Louise (1 July 1994). "Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994". American Journalism. 11 (3): 293–294. doi:10.1080/08821127.1994.10731655. ISSN0882-1127.
^Blaszczyk, Regina Lee (1996). "Review of Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934". The Business History Review. 70 (4): 602–604. doi:10.2307/3117322. JSTOR3117322. S2CID154969912.
^Benjamin, Louise (1 July 1994). "Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994". American Journalism. 11 (3): 293–294. doi:10.1080/08821127.1994.10731655. ISSN0882-1127.