I am Professor Emerit from the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at the University of Oregon. In 2015, I moved to New York City and taught at the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York for ten years. My classes included Issues in Medical Ethics; Reproductive Technologies; The Politics of Disability; Sex, Gender, and Bioethics; and Medical Ethics Behind Bars (co-taught with Logan McBride). 

I am the author of Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex (2nd ed. 2021) and Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England (1997) as well as the editor of American Sexual Histories; Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America; and Dear Lizzie: Memoir of a Jewish Immigrant Woman.

My articles on both the history and contemporary analysis of medical ethics, gender, sexuality, and religion have appeared in the Hastings Center Report, Bioethics Forum, Journal of American History, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, and The New York Times. For many years I have been a member of the Ethics Committee at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Hospital and an editor of nursingclio.org, a collaborative blog project that focuses on the intersection of gender, history, and medicine. In addition, I’m a former board member of InterACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth and a current board member of Talia’s Voice: Projects for Patient Safety.

I graduated from Smith College, received my MA in History from Brown University and my Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley.