Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French

Primary concentrations:

Poetry and Poetics, Contemporary Literature and the Arts, Translation.

Selection of Books Published:

• Surrealism and the Literary Imagination. The Hague: Mouton, 1966.
• The Poetry of Dada and Surrealism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971.
• The Inner Theatre of Recent French Poetry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.
• André Breton. Boston: Twayne, 1974.
• The Presence of René Char. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
• René Char. Boston: Twayne, 1976.
• The Surrealist Voice of Robert Desnos. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977.
• La Main de Pierre Reverdy. Geneva: Droz, 1979.
• The Eye in the Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.
• A Metapoetics of the Passage: Architextures Surrealist and After. Hanover: University of New England Press, 1981.
• L'Oeuvre filante de René Char. Paris: Nizet, 1981.
• Yves Bonnefoy. Boston: Twayne, 1984.
• Reading Frames in Modern Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
• Edmond Jabès. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988.
• The Art of Interference: Stressed Readings in Visual and Verbal Texts. Cambridge: Polity, and Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
• Women of Bloomsbury: Virginia, Vanessa, and Carrington. New York and London: Routledge, 1990.
• Robert Motherwell: What Art Holds. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
• Carrington and Lytton/ Alone Together. London: Cecil Woolf, 1996.
• André Breton, Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996.
• The Surrealist Look: An Erotics of Encounter. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1997.
• Surrealism and the Art of Display.  Wexner Center, Fall, 1997.
• Bloomsbury and France: Art and Friends. (with Sarah Bird Wright)  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Picasso's Weeping Woman: The Life and Art of Dora Maar.  Boston: Little Brown / Bulfinch, 2000.  Dora Maar with and without Picasso: A Biography. London: Thames and  Hudson, 2000.  Translations:  Les Vies de Dora Maar:  Bataille, Picasso et les surrealistes. Paris: Thames et Hudson, 2000;  Dora Maar con y sin Picasso: una biografia (Madrid: Destino, 2000); Die Kunsterlin an Picasso's Seite (Berlin: Nicolai, 2000).
• Virginia Woolf: Illustrated Life. New York and London: Overlook Duckworth, 2001; 2004 (paper).
• Marcel Proust: Illustrated Life. New York and London: Overlook Duckworth, 2003.

Editions:

• Théorie/Tableau/Texte.  Paris: Minard, 1983.
• About French Poetry from Dada to Tel Quel: Theory and Text. Detroit: Wayne State, 1984.
• The Prose Poem in France (co-editor with Hermine Riffaterre). New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
• Le Manifeste et le caché. Paris: Minard, 1981.
• Le Texte et son double.  Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1985.
• Writing in a Modern Temper. Stanford: Anma Libri, 1984.
• Textual Analysis: Some Readers Reading. New York: Modern Language Association, 1986.
• Perspectives on Perception: Philosophy, Art, and Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 1988.
• Edmond Jabès. (co-editor with Richard Stamelman)  Geneva: Editions de la Montagne, 1989.
• Reading Proust Now. (co-editor with Eugène Nicole)  New York: Peter Lang, 1990.
• Selected Poems of René Char. (co-editor with Tina Jolas and translated)  New York: New Directions, 1992.
• Women and Surrealism. (co-editor with Ruedi Kuenzli and Gwen Raaberg)  Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1991.
• City Images. Philadelphia, Gordon and Breach, 1991.
• L'Esprit Créateur. (co-editor with Richard Stamelman) 32, 2 (Summer 1992).
• Joseph Cornell's Theater of the Mind: Selected Journals, Letters, and Files. New York and London: Thames and Hudson, 1994.
• HarperCollins World Reader. (chief editor)  New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
• Contre-Courants: Les femmes s'écrivent à travers les siècles. (co-edited with Nancy K. Miller, Elizabeth Houlding, and Cheryl Morgan)  Prentice Hall, 1994.
• Écritures de femmes:  Nouvelles Cartographies. (co-editor with Mary Jean Green, Marianne Hirsch, Ronnie Scharfman)  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
• "Around Yves Bonnefoy" (co-editor with Renée Waldinger)  Special issue of L'Esprit Créateur, 36, 3 (Fall 1996).
• The Surrealist Painters and Poets.  Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 2001.
• Manifesto: A Century of Isms.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.
• Surrealism. New York and London: Phaidon (Themes and Movements series), 2004
• Yale Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 2004

Translations:

• Tristan Tzara, Approximate Man and Other Writings, 1974.
• Poems of René Char. (with Jonathan Griffin)  Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
• Roof Slates and other Poems of Pierre Reverdy. (with Patricia Terry)  Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981.
• Selected Poems and Prose of Stephane Mallarmé. New York: New Directions, 1982.
• Poems of André Breton. (with Jean-Pierre Cauvin)  Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
• Selected Poems of St-John Perse. New York: New Directions, 1982.
• André Breton, Mad Love. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
• Andre Breton, Communicating Vessels. (with Geoffrey Harris)  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
• Marcelin Pleynet, Robert Motherwell. Paris: Daniel Papierski, 1990.
• Selected Poems of Pierre Reverdy. (editor and co-translator with John Ashbery and Patricia Terry) Winston-Salem: Wake Forest University Press, 1991.
• Selected Poems of René Char.  (editor and co-translator with Tina Jolas)  New York: New Directions, 1991.
• Jacques Derrida and Paule Thévenin, The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1998.
• André Breton, Lost Steps. (co-editor with Mark Polizzotti)  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
• André Breton, Break of Day. (co-translator and co-editor with Mark Polizzotti) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
• Mallarmé in Prose. (co-translator and editor) New York: New Directions, 2001.
• Louis-René des Forêts, Ostinato.  Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Elected Positions:

• President, Association for Study of Dada and Surrealism, 1971-75
• President, Modern Language Association of America, 1983
• President, Academy of Literary Studies, 1984-5
• President, American Comparative Literature Association, 1989-91

Fellowships:

• Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow;
• National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellow;
• Director, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminars (2);
• Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar; life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University;
• Getty Scholar;
• Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio).

Editorships:

• Editor: Le Siècle éclaté (Paris: 1973--);
• Co-Editor, Dada and Surrealism (1980--);
• Chief Editor, HarperCollins World Reader (1994);
• Editorial Board: College Literature; Comparative Literature Studies; Comparative Studies; Diacritics; French Review (1970-80); Modern Fiction Studies; New York Literary Forum; Publications of the Modern Language Association (PMLA,1979-81); Sites; Twentieth Century Studies.
• Advisor: Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern Poetry; Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies Reader.

See also the Mary Ann Caws page at TimeWarner Bookmarks.