Margaret W. Ferguson is Professor Emerita of the University of California, Davis, and scholar of Early Modern literature, literacy studies, and feminist and queer theory in English, French, and Italian. Her scholarly contributions are at the center of current developments in the field. Ferguson's 1983 coedited volume, initiated the exploration of gender in Renaissance philosophy, religion, social relations, and works of literature and art.

Ferguson joined the UC Davis English Department in 1997. She received her A.B. in History of Art and English at Cornell University in 1969 and her doctorate from the Yale Department of Comparative Literature in 1974. Ferguson taught at Yale, Columbia, and the University of Colorado at Boulder before moving to UC Davis. he is the daughter of Mary Anne Ferguson, who was a scholar of Women's Studies at The University of Massachusetts Boston, who helped found what is now UMass Boston's women's and gender studies department. She is also the sister of Jean Ferguson Carr with whom she co-wrote a version of the introduction to by Florence Howe. Ferguson served as President of the Modern Language Association in 2014-2015. She has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Davis Humanities Institute in addition to the two short-term fellowships in South Africa and Australia. Ferguson, who retired in June 2017, continues to pursue her scholarly work and help graduate students finish their dissertations. She serves on the Advisory Boards for and .