Historian who specialized in gender history, human rights history, and the French Revolution. She spent much of her teaching career in the History Department at the University of California- Los Angeles.
After graduating from Carleton College and Stanford University, she taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California-Berkeley.
She published an acclaimed 2007 scholarly work entitled Inventing Human Rights.
She grew up in Minnesota, but was actually born in Panama.
She and fellow historian/professor Paul Schroeder both specialized in the study of European history.
