Head, Special Collections and Rare Book Room, Waldo Library

PhD, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (2001) ; MLS, Indiana University (2006)
Medieval and Early Modern Europe, women and religion, social history, prosopography, book and manuscript history


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Office: 4412 Friedmann Hall
E-mail: E-mail: susan.steuer@wmich.edu
Phone: (269) 387-5221

Teaching

Most of my teaching involves providing presentations and research opportunities for WMU students in the collections of the Libraries. I also teach a course on primary sources in theory and practice with Dr. Sharon Carlson, the Director of the Archives and Regional History Collections.

Research

Currently, much of my work is focused upon WMU's rare book collections. I am involved in the preparation of a catalog of the manuscript holdings in the Dom Edmond Obrecht Collection of Gethsemani Abbey (Trappist, KY), which is on permanent loan to WMU in conjunction with the Institute of Cistercian Studies programs. I am also looking into how that collection was acquired and developed by the monastery at the turn of the century and how medieval books came to the United States through religious institutions during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. My dissertation focused upon widows in the north of England who took formal vows of chastity between the thirteenth century and the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536. I hope to continue to research the relationship between widows and religious institutions both in England and on the continent in the near future.

Publications

ÒIdentifying Chaste Widows: Linking individual women to religious vocation,Ó book chapter accepted for festschrift for Dr. Barbara Hanawalt, forthcoming with Ashgate, anticipated publication date of Spring 2010

ÒPractical Pastoral Care: Vowesses in Northern England in the Later Middle Ages,Ó book chapter accepted for Pastoral Care in the Later Middle Ages, a volume in the Companions to the Christian Tradition series at Brill, forthcoming May 2009.

ÒThe Institute for Cistercian Studies Collection: Academic CollaborationÓ in Michigan Libraries, November/December 2006.

"Family Strategies: Financial Planning and the Urban Widow, 1100-1500," Essays in Medieval Studies, 12 (1995). Available on-line at http://www.illinoismedieval.org/EMS/VOL12/steuer.html