Ehrhardt received her B.A. in English while minoring in Women’s Studies from Duke University, and her M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. Her foci include women’s literature from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. Her current courses include Gay and Lesbian Literature and Contemporary American Women’s Writing. She is the author of Writers of Conviction: The Personal Politics of Zona Gale, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Rose Wilder Lane, and Josephine Herbst (2004), and is currently working on a book about dieting in American literature.