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YORK PROFESSOR WINS PRESTIGIOUS PRIZE FOR WOMEN'S HISTORY BOOK TORONTO, February 6, 1997 -- A book written by York University professor Ann B. (Rusty) Shteir has earned one of the most coveted prizes given out by the American Historical Association (AHA). Shteir's book, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora's Daughters and Botany in England, 1760 to 1860, won the AHA's Joan Kelly Memorial Prize for the best book in women's history and/or feminist theory. This prize is the AHA's most prestigious prize in women's history, drawing more submissions than most AHA prizes, with an estimated 45 to 70 books competing in any given year. Shteir is a humanities professor in both Atkinson College and the Faculty of Arts, as well as being director of York's Graduate Programme in Women's Studies. She has been teaching at York University since 1972. York University president Susan Mann said the award reflects well on the university, as well as on Shteir. "Professor Shteir's important award is indicative of the calibre of research in history and women's studies taking place at York," said Mann. "We are pleased and proud that the AHA has given her this well deserved recognition." "I'm very honoured to have won this award," said Shteir. "My book is an interdisciplinary work that looks at literature, history and the history of science, and I'm pleased that a historical association should believe that this kind of study embodies the spirit of its work." The AHA presented the award to Shteir recently at its annual meeting, which was held this year in New York City. "I hope that my book will make people more interested in history and in historical approaches to the study of women and of science," said Shteir. "It took me a very long time to complete this book, and it is a thrill to have this recognition." The book is the culmination of 10 years of research by Shteir. Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) examines the history of science and women's history, combining them by focusing on the ways women were involved in science culture over a 100-year period. In its citation, the AHA describes Shteir's book as, "bringing together the history of women and the history of science with depth and grace. Carefully researched and elegantly presented, the study of women's contributions to, and exclusion from, the scientific field of botany helps us understand more about the ways ideas about human nature, and the literary genres in which those ideas are put forth, affect our explanations of what we call 'nature'." Shteir received funding to research the book as part of a three-year grant titled "Women, Writing and Science Culture" from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). This grant also enabled her to co-edit a collection of essays on women and popular science and to produce an edition of a popular science book first published in the 1790s. Shteir also received an Atkinson Research Fellowship that gave her one year's release time from teaching to concentrate on her research for the book. The Joan Kelly Memorial Prize commemorates a famous historian and one of the founders of modern women's studies. Shteir says Kelly "was an absolute pioneer in women's history, and someone who opened up many questions for feminist scholars of my generation." The prize was established in 1983 by the AHA's Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession, and the Coordinating Council for Women in History. York professor Bettina Bradbury, a colleague of Shteir's, said Shteir "reflects the high intellectual and scholarly ideals exemplified by the life and work of Joan Kelly. This really is a great triumph for Ann Shteir and for feminist scholarship at York." The AHA is the oldest and largest professional historical organization in the United States, bringing together nearly 5,000 institutions and more than 15,000 individuals, including college and university faculty, public historians, independent scholars, archivists, librarians, and secondary school teachers. The AHA was organized in 1884 and chartered by the United States Congress in 1889; its establishment coincided with the professionalization of history as a discipline in the United States. Its central mission is the advancement of historical knowledge.
For more information, call:
Prof. Ann B. (Rusty) Shteir, Director
Mary Ann Horgan
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