Elizabeth Long majored in History at Stanford University, and worked for several years in publishing for Simon & Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in New York City. She completed her doctorate at Brandeis University in 1979, teaching Women's Studies and doing administrative work at Wellesley College and M.I.T. during graduate school. She joined the faculty at Rice University in 1978.

Professor Long has published in the fields of cultural sociology, sociology of gender, the sociology of knowledge, qualitative sociology, and contemporary sociological theory, as well as in the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies, cultural studies, and woman's studies. Her most recent book is Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life (University of Chicago Press, 2003). Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has served on several Editorial Boards. At Rice University, she has won several teaching awards, including the George R. Brown Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Julia Miles Chance Award for teaching excellence and gender sensitivity. Her ongoing projects include an article about an African American women's book club associated with the N.A.A.C.P. that met in Houston from 1949 into the 1970's; a study of the uses of field research and the concept of culture in the Chicago School of Sociology; a study of the varieties of women's activism in the late 20th and early 21st century; and a piece on Merleau Ponty's relevance for feminist rethinking of the body.