Susan Rugh: Mormon Scholar
Susan Sessions Rugh is an author, and university scholar and professor. She teaches courses in America cultural history and Women’s Studies. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Rugh is a native of Utah. Her father was a professor at Brigham Young University, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in history. She earned her master’s and PhD in American history from the University of Chicago, where she was a Century Scholar.
She was an assistant professor at St. Cloud State University from 1993 to 1997. Since 1997, she has been a professor of history at BYU. She was associate chair of the BYU history department from 2001 to 2003 and associate dean of the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences from 2008 to 2011.
Her research emphasis is the history of travel and tourism and the history of rural America. Her current research is about family-owned motels and immigrant entrepreneurs from Gujurat, India.
She has written books Are We There Yet?: The Golden Age of American Family Vacations, Family Vacation, Our Common Country: Family Farming, Culture, and Community in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest, and the forthcoming No Vacancy: The Rise and Fall of Motels in America. She has written numerous articles and chapters in books and encyclopedias.
She has been a member of several boards, committees, and editorial boards, including the Mormon History Association, the Organization of American Historians, the American History Association, the Western Historical Quarterly, and the Journal of Mormon History.
She is married to Thomas F. Rugh and they are the parents of three sons.
