Fonds F0708 - Ann B. (Rusty) Shteir fonds

Ann B. “Rusty” Shteir (1941-) is a Professor Emerita and Senior Scholar in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University. She began teaching at York in 1972 and was among the founders of the Women’s Studies (WMST) Graduate Program in 1992. Her scholarship and teaching have been widely recognized as pioneering and groundbreaking, especially in regard to her work on women writers on botany. Her research interests include women and the cultural history of science; feminist history; historical perspectives on women and nature; gender and science; the Enlightenment and 18th-century culture; 18th and 19th-century botany; British and colonial histories of gender and natural knowledge; women and science writing; and literature and science.

Shteir received her PhD in comparative literature from Rutgers University in 1973, having already begun teaching mature and part-time students as a professor at York University in 1972. In 1977 she was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, and later Full Professor in 1998. She has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in humanities, women’s studies on gender, women’s and feminist history, and cultural history. Shteir served as the first Graduate Program Director for the WMST Graduate program from 1993-1997, and was similarly instrumental to the establishment of the PhD in Women’s Studies program. Throughout her academic tenure she has held numerous administrative positions and contributed expansively to the University’s course offerings, on-campus events, and other projects.

Shteir’s many publication credits, as both author and editor, include books, chapters, articles and conference papers, book reviews, and reports. Of particular note is her monograph, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora’s Daughters and Botany in England, 1760-1860, which won the prestigious Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women’s History in 1997.

York University recognized Shteir's immense academic contributions and achievements with the conferment of an Honorary Doctor of Laws in 2016. Her contributions to interdisciplinary feminist research and women’s history have been numerous and substantial.