But when she started graduate studies at Bryn Mawr, a women's college outside Philadelphia, her opinion changed.
"At first it seemed like an unreal kind of world...[but] I began to see how important it was," Dunn says. "I was in a place that was pretty much run by women and for women."
Dunn had trouble applying for positions in an academic world where female professors were scarce.
"I wrote endless letters trying to get jobs at various history departments but no one would give me a tumble," she says. She ended up teaching history at Bryn Mawr.
Dunn met her husband in 1959, then a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and the couple were married in 1960.
Both Dunns were specialists on early American history, and they later edited a four-volume edition of William Penn's papers together. After their two children were born, Richard Dunn briefly substituted in his wife's classes.
"We could buy the same books and teach the same courses," said Richard Dunn, who heads a center for early American studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
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