In Professor Kete's teaching and in her research she has sought to broaden the field of history by including within its purview previously neglected but rich subjects of study. Her first book, The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth Century Paris helped create the thriving interdisciplinary field of the cultural history of animals. Her current project, Plotlines: Ambition and Culture in Modernizing France identifies the problem of ambition as highly significant in the intellectual and political climate of post-Revolutionary France.