CLARE CAVANAGH
Professo
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Crowe Hall 4-107
(847) 467-2360
ccavanagh5@northwestern.edu
Research Interests:
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Russian Poetry; Modern Polish Poetry;
Polish Literature, History and Culture; Anglo-American Poetry; Poetry and Politics;
Translation; Theory of the Lyric; Gender and Eastern European Literature;
Comparative Modernism; Comparative Romanticism; Postcolonialism and Eastern Europe
Clare Cavanagh is a specialist in modern Russian, Polish, and Anglo-American poetry. Her most recent book,
Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West (Yale UP) received the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. It also received the ASEES/Orbis Book Prize for Polish Studies (2010). Her first book, Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition (Princeton UP, 1995), received the AATSEEL Prize for Oustanding Scholarly Book in Slavic Literature (1997). She is also an acclaimed translator of contemporary Polish poetry, whose awards and honors include the John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation, the Katharine Washburne Memorial Lecture in
Translation, the PEN/Book-of-the Month Club Prize for Outstanding Literary Translation, and
the AATSEEL Award for Outstanding Translation from a Slavic Language. She is an Associate Editor of The
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (fourth edition, in progress) and is currently working on an authorized biography the Nobel Prize-winning
poet Czeslaw Milosz, entitled Czeslaw Milosz and His Age: A Critical Life (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). She has received
the William Riley Parker Prize of the Modern Language Association, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Council of Learned Societies for her work in Russian and Polish
poetry. Cavanagh's essays and translations have appeared in TLS, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic,
The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, Partisan Review, Common Knowledge, Poetry,
Literary Imagination and other periodicals.
BOOKS (scholarship)
Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition.
Russia, Poland, and the West. Yale University Press, 2010. Princeton University Press, 1995. AATSEEL Award,
National Book Critics Circle Award, Criticism, 2010.
ASEES/Orbis Book Prize in Polish Studies, 2010. Outstanding Scholarly Book in Slavic Literatures, 1997.
Choice, Outstanding Academic Title, 2010.
BOOKS (translation)
Wislawa Szymborska, Here. Adam Zagajewski, Eternal Enemies.
Tr. Clare Cavanagh, Stanislaw Baranczak. Harcourt, 2010.
Found in Translation Prize, 2010. Tr. Clare Cavanagh. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008.
Wislawa Szymborska, Monologue of a Dog. Adam Zagajewski, A Defense of Ardor .
Tr. Clare Cavanagh, Stanislaw Baranczak. Harcourt, 2005. Tr. Clare Cavanagh. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.
A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year, 2005.
Wislawa Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading. Adam Zagajewski, Without End: New and Selected Poems.
Tr. Clare Cavanagh. Harcourt, 2002. Finalist, PEN/Book-of Tr. Clare Cavanagh, and Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry, and C.K.
-the-Month Club Translation Prize, 2002. Williams. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002. National Book Award Finalist, 2002.
Editor's Choice, Reader's Subscription. A New York Times Notable Book, 2002.
Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty. Adam Zagajewski, Mysticism for Beginners.
Tr. Clare Cavanagh. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000. Tr. Clare Cavanagh. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997.
A Los Angeles Times Best Book, 1997.
Wislawa Szymborska, Poems New and Collected 1957-1997. Wislawa Szymborska, View with a Grain of Sand.
Tr. Stanislaw Baranczak, Clare Cavanagh. Harcourt Brace, 1998. Tr. Stanislaw Baranczak, Clare Cavanagh. Harcourt Brace, 1995.
A Los Angeles Times Best Book, 1998. PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, 1995.
Selection, Reader's Subscription. AATSEEL Prize for Outstanding Translation from a Slavic Language, 1995.
Swedish Academy Citation, Nobel Prize Press Release, 1996.
Stanislaw Baranczak, Clare Cavanagh, ed. and tr.
Spoiling Cannibals' Fun: Polish Poetry in the Last
Two Decades of Communist Rule.
Northwestern University Press, 1991.
Work in Progress:
Book: Czeslaw Milosz and His Age: A Critical Life. Authorized biography, under contract Farrar, Straus, ,and Giroux.
Edited volume: Associate Editor, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, fourth edition.
Translation: Adam Zagajewski, Unseen Hand. Forthcoming, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011.
Selected Honors and Awards:
2011-2012 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.
2010 Found in Translation Prize (with Stanislaw Baranczak)
2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.
2010 ASEES/Orbis Book Prize in Polish Studies
2010 Choice, Outstanding Academic Title, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics
2005-7 Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor in Literature, Northwestern University
2005 John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation, Poetry Foundation
2003 Finalist, PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize for Outstanding Literary Translation
2003 Elected to membership, PEN/America
1998-9 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
1997 American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages Prize for Outstanding Book in Slavic Literatures
1997 Polish Pen Club Prize for outstanding contributions to Polish literature in translation.
1996 Swedish Academy citation for outstanding translation, Nobel Prize Press Release for Wislawa Szymborska.
1996 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize
1996 American Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages Prize for Outstanding Translation from a Slavic Language
1994 William Riley Parker Prize of the Modern Language Association
1993-4 American Council of Learned Societies Postdoctoral Fellowship
1993-4 Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship