Mary Ann Caws

Mary Ann Caws (born 1933) is an American author, art historian and literary critic.

She is currently a Distinguished Professor of English, French and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is an expert on Surrealism and modern English and French literature, having written biographies of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. She works on the interrelations of visual art and literary texts, and has written a biography of Pablo Picasso, and is preparing one of Salvador Dalí. She has also written on Andre Breton, Robert Desnos, Rene Char, Yves Bonnefoy, Robert Motherwell, Edmond Jabès and Joseph Cornell, edited anthologies on Manifestos - Isms, Surrealism, Twentieth Century French Literature, and translated Stéphane Mallarmé, Tristan Tzara, Pierre Reverdy, Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Robert Desnos, and Rene Char.

Among the positions she has held are President, Association for Study of Dada and Surrealism, 1971-75 and President, Modern Language Association of America, 1983, Academy of Literary Studies, 1984-5, and the American Comparative Literature Association, 1989-91.

In October 2004, she published her autobiography, To the Boathouse: a Memoir (University Alabama Press).

She was married to Peter Caws and is the mother of Matthew Caws, lead singer of the band Nada Surf.