She was Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Humanities at Rice University, where she founded the women's studies program and chaired the Department of French and Italian.

In addition to psychoanalysis, especially Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory (particularly in the context of the American and French feminist responses to it), she has written on psychoanalysis and feminism; the Marquis de Sade; feminist literary criticism; pedagogy; accusations of sexual abuse; photography; queer theory; and ageing.

Blau's talent for finding the perfect picture in the mundane moment is combined with Gallop's commentary as a subject and as a scholar.

Each chapter involves analysis of an influential book concerning photography—including Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida and Susan Sontag's On Photography in relation to Blau's photographs.

Through close readings of the literary theorists Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, she argues that the death of the author is best understood as a relation to temporality for both the reader and writer.

She received some media coverage for a November 2013 incident when she and her husband gave player Giannis Antetokounmpo a ride after noticing him running on foot to the Bradley Center before a game on an 18 °F day.