A graduate of Yale University, she has taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as a visiting professor. She is the author of Married to a Daughter of the Land: Interethnic Marriages in California, 1820-1880 (University of Nevada, Las Vegas Press, 2007). She is also the author of an article in Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community (Oxford Press, 2005) and various entries in Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006). She is currently working on the family history of the Vallejo-Cooper-Molera family of Monterey, California, and the legacy of their Californio identity and how it influenced them well into the twentieth century.