Clare Cavanagh (born May 23, 1956) is an American literary critic, a Slavist, a translator, and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University. She is an acclaimed translator of contemporary Polish poetry, and is currently under contract to write the authorized biography of Czes?aw Mi?osz.She holds a B.A from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an M.A. and Ph.D from Harvard University (1978, 1981 and 1988 respectively). Before coming to Northwestern University, she taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her work has been translated into Russian, Polish, Hungarian, French, Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese.She won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) for Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West.