Smith-Rosenberg is known for her scholarship in U.S. women's and gender history, and for her contributions to developing interdisciplinary programs and international scholarly networks addressing women's history, gender studies, the history of sexuality, and cultural and Atlantic studies.
Smith-Rosenberg's article, "The Female World of Love and Ritual", has been described as creating "a template for how feminists could literally make history" (Potter, 2015). Her article "Discovering the Subject of the Great Constitutional Debate", was awarded the Binkley-Stephenson Award by the Organization of American Historians in 1993. Smith-Rosenberg's book, ''This Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity'', won a Choice Award for Distinguished Scholarly Book in 2011.
