Under the pseudonym Molly Weatherfield, she has written erotic novels in the BDSM genre ("bondage, domination and sadomasochism").
[3] In 2010 Rosenthal participated in an academic conference held in Brussels by the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance.
[4] Diverging from much of the current academic and scholarly production on romance, her critical work does not primarily focus on vindicating the genre and its values (a project furthered in recent years by, among others, Crusie, Jayne Ann Krentz,[5][6] Mary Bly,[7] Sarah MacLean and Jen Prokop,[8] Pamela Regis,[9] Maya Rodale,[10] Candy Tan and Sarah Wendell,[11] and others), but rather pursues a formal inquiry, based in both her own experience with genre conventions and the hermeneutic practices of queer theory adapted to the cultural studies tradition usually traced to Raymond Williams.
Her approximately "Regency-set" historical romances are unusual in the genre for their relatively unvarnished depiction of the period's inequalities, violence and physical hardships.
The genre generally requires softening the depiction of the life of servants and the working class, but Rosenthal's work demonstrates an awareness of the elitism of the genre's formulae, and develops the labouring class figures in her world into compelling secondary characters.