Christie McDonald is an American literary scholar, historian, cultural critic and theorist currently the Smith Research Professor of French Language and Literature in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures,[1] and Research Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. She is currently a member of the Emeriti Faculty.[2] McDonald is the author and editor of numerous books and articles. Her teaching career has focused on the eighteenth century, as well as twentieth- to twenty-first-century French thought in a comparative framework.[3] Additionally, she has published in areas of literature and philosophy, anthropology, feminist theory, and the arts (music and painting).[4]