She is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor Emerita in U.S. History at Stanford University[1] She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College in 1969[2] and her Master of Arts (1972) and PhD (1976) in history from Columbia University.
[5] She has received numerous research fellowships, including grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Her first book, Their Sisters' Keepers received the Alice and Edith Hamilton Prize for best scholarly manuscript on women from the University of Michigan in 1978 and was published in 1981.
She has won the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize from the Western Association of Women Historians three times: in 1982 for Victorian Women: A Documentary Account (shared), in 1997 for Maternal Justice, and in 2014 for Redefining Rape.
[10] Her earlier co-authored book with John D'Emilio, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, was cited by Justice Anthony Kennedy in his 2003 opinion for Lawrence v. Texas, with which the American Supreme Court overturned all remaining anti-sodomy laws.