She graduated from Stanford University, with a BA and Ph.D., in 1974. She teaches at Barnard College. Her papers are held at Radcliffe College.
She is married to Gerald Rosenberg; they have two sons, Clifford and Nicholas, a daughter-in-law, Kim, and one grandson, Henry. She lives in New York City.
1983 Frederick Jackson Turner AwardChanging the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. 2004. ISBN 978-0-231-12644-1. Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century. New York: Macmillan. 1992. ISBN 978-0-374-52347-3. (Revised Edition, Hill and Wang, 2008)Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1982. ISBN 978-0-300-03092-1. David Hollinger, ed. (2006). "Women in the Humanities: Taking Their Place". The Humanities and the Dynamics of Inclusion, 1945-2000. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-8390-3. William Theodore De Bary, ed. (2006). "Virginia Gildersleeve: Opening the Gates". Living Legacies at Columbia. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 350–61. ISBN 978-0-231-13884-0. Theodore Porter and Dorothy Ross, ed. (2003). "Gender". The Modern Social Sciences. Vol. 7 of The Cambridge History of Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 678–692. ISBN 978-0-521-59442-4. "Conjunctions: Race and Gender in the Work of Pauli Murray". Journal of Women's History: 68–73. Summer 2002. ISSN 1042-7961. Susan Ware, ed. (1998). "Pauli Murray and the Killing of Jane Crow". Forgotten Heroes From America's Past. New York: Free Press. pp. 279–87. ISBN 978-0-684-84375-9. Richard Bulliet, ed. (1998). "The Woman Question". The Columbia History of the 20th Century. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 53–80. ISBN 978-0-231-07629-6. G. J. Barker-Benfield, Catherine Clinton, eds. (1998). "Margaret Mead". Portraits of American women: from settlement to the present. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512048-6. 