She began college at Emory University at age 15, where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in women's studies in 1993.

[7] After receiving her doctorate, Starr decided to retrain in cognitive neuroscience, supported by a New Directions Fellowship awarded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

[9][10] With Susanne Wofford and faculty at NYU, in 2015 Starr co-founded a liberal arts prison education program at Wallkill Correctional Facility in New York State.

[19][20] Starr's research is interdisciplinary,[21][better source needed] combining literary scholarship, empirical aesthetics, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

Her book Feeling Beauty[22] offered an initial model of aesthetic experience that relies on a network of interconnected neural structures.