Sara MacDonald

My research is focused on the history of gender and higher education, particularly the early history of women in Canadian universities. My teaching interests include historical methods, history of education, and Canadian intellectual history. I'm a Full Professor in the History program in the School of Liberal Arts, and Vice-Dean for the Faculty of Arts at Laurentian University. I'm currently the Treasurer of the Ontario Women's History Network (OWHN). I served as President of the Canadian History of Education Association (CHEA) from 2006-2008, and Chair of the Department of History at Laurentian University from 2005-2012.

• Carleton University (PhD)
  
• McMaster University (MA)
  
• University of Toronto (BA Hons)
  

Full Professor, School of Liberal Arts

My research explores gender in the history of higher education in Canada. My book, University Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in Canada, was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2021.

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• 2023, Alison Prentice Award, Best Book on Ontario Women's History, co-winner, Ontario Historical Society
• 2019, OUSA Award for Teaching Excellence, Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance
• 2009, Marion Dewar Prize in Canadian Women's History, National Capital Committee on the Scholarship, Preservation and Dissemination of Women's History
• 2000, Founders' Prize, Canadian History of Education Association, Best English Language Article on the History of Education in Canada
• 1995, John Bullen Prize, Canadian Historical Association, Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis on a Historical Topic Submitted in a Canadian University

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Selected Publications:

• MacDonald, Sara Z. “Undergraduate Bodies: Women and Academic Citizenship in  English Canada, 1875-1914.” The Canadian Historical Review 105, no. 3 (2024): 367-95.

• MacDonald, Sara Z. University Women:  A History of Women and Higher Education in Canada.  Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021

• MacDonald, Sara Z. "An Insurrection of Women: Deans of Women and Student Government after the Great War." Historical Studies in Education / Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 31, no. 1 (2019): 139-59

• Burke, Sara Z. "Becoming Undergraduates:  Women and University Culture in Nineteenth-Century Canada."  In Women in Higher Education, 1850-1970:  International Perspectives, eds. E. Lisa Panayotidis and Paul Stortz, 97-118. New York: Routledge, 2016
• Burke, Sara Z., and Patrice Milewski, eds. Schooling in Transition: Readings in Canadian History of Education. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012
• Burke, Sara Z. “Dancing into Education: The First World War and the Roots of Change in Women’s Higher Education.” In Cultures, Communities, and Conflict: Histories of Canadian Universities and War, eds. Paul Stortz and E. Lisa Panayotidis, 95-120. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012
• Burke, Sara Z. [Review Essay] “Equal Citizenship of the Mind: Recent Studies in the History of Women’s Education.” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 23, no. 1 (2011): 81-6
• Burke, Sara Z. “Students.”  In Laurentian University: A History, edited by Matt Bray, 155-200. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010
• Burke, Sara Z. “The Berkeley of Sudbury: Student Radicalism at Laurentian University in the Sixties.” History of Intellectual Culture 8, no. 1 (2008/09)
• Burke, Sara Z. “Women of Newfangle: Co-Education, Racial Discourse, and Women's Rights in Victorian Ontario.” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'éducation 19, no. 1 (2007): 111-33
• Burke, Sara Z. Seeking the Highest Good: Social Service and Gender at the University of Toronto, 1888-1937. Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1996
• Burke, Sara Z. “‘Being unlike Man’: Challenges to Co-Education at the University of Toronto, 1884-1909.” Ontario History 93, no. 1 (2001): 11-31
• Burke, Sara Z. “New Women and Old Romans: Co-Education at the University of Toronto, 1884-95.” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 2 (1999): 219-41
• Burke, Sara Z. “Science and Sentiment: Social Service and Gender at the University of Toronto, 1888-1910.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association  4 (1993): 75-93