Mary Zeiss Stange

Professor Emeritus

(1950–2024)

 

Born on July 5, 1950, Mary dedicated her life to exploring and advocating for women’s equality and shared a unique space in the academic world linking feminist theory, ecofeminism, religious studies, and women as hunters.

Mary’s academic career as a professor included teaching at several higher educational institutions including Clarkson University, St. Lawrence University, Black Hills State University, Dana College, Montana State University at Billings, and Central Michigan University before embarking on a 26-year career at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY as a professor of women’s studies and religion, and as the college’s first Director of Women’s Studies Program. Her popular courses included Women, Religion, and Spirituality; Goddesses and Amazons; Ecofeminism, Women and Environment; Feminism, Politics, and Globalization; and several Feminist Theory Seminars.

Mary shared her life with her students and academic colleagues at Skidmore College and with her spouse Doug on the Crazy Woman Bison Ranch, in Ekalaka, MT. For 37 years, Mary and Doug transformed seven square miles of degraded grasslands at the base of the Chalk Buttes in the southeastern corner of Montana into thriving hills, forest, and prairie, proving that returning this area literally to a place where buffalo roamed, and deer and antelope played was the best and most ecologically and economically sustainable use of the land.

Mary weaved her personal and academic interests together into many published books, notably, Woman the Hunter, Gun Women, and her memoir Hard Grass: Life on the Crazy Woman Bison Ranch; as a co-editor withCarol Oyster to The Encyclopedia of Women in Today’s World; in prominent articles published in a variety ofmagazines including Journal of Law, The Women’s Review of Books, Economics and Policy, Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia, Liberty Magazine, Outdoor America; and as a regular contributor for USA Today. Herwork was the subject of several profile interviews in publications including the New York Times, Sierra Magazine, and a lengthy feature interview by the late Barbara Ehrenreich in Ms. Magazine. Her final book was Hunting: A Cultural History, with Jan E. Dizard, published by MIT Press in 2022.

Upon her retirement in 2016, Skidmore College established the Mary Zeiss Stange Award in Religion, which annually recognizes the outstanding accomplishment by a senior major.