I received my Ph.D. from the History of Ideas Department at Brandeis University in 1975, working under the direction of the philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre. My first teaching position, from 1973-1974, was in the Philosophy Department at The University of Lancaster, Lancaster England. I began researching and teaching about Women and Gender Studies in the late 1970s when I was on the faculty at The State University of New York Albany. In January of 2000 I joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis as the Susan E. and William P. Stiritz Distinguished Professor of Women and Gender Studies and Professor of History. I have written and edited many books and articles about gender, including, my first book, Gender and History: The Limits of Social Theory in the Age of the Family (Columbia University Press, 1986), Identity Before Identity Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory ( Routledge, 1997). I was the editor of a 32 volume book series titled "Thinking Gender" with Routledge. My writings have been translated and published in French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish and Serbo Croation.
Bread and Roses Award, SUNY Albany 1997; Rockefeller Foundation Humanist in Residence Fellowship 1991-1992 at the Cnter for Research on Women, Duke University and The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC; Residential Fellowhip at the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life, The Divinity School , Harvard University 1998-1999