| In June 2002, Carol Christ became the 10th president of Smith College. There, she has encouraged development of coursework emphasizing fluency in American cultures and in the diversity of experience of American ethnic groups.
 Following receipt of a Ph.D. in English from Yale University, Christ joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. She entered the University's administration in 1988, serving first as dean of humanities and later as provost and dean of the College of Letters and Sciences. In 1994, she was appointed vice chancellor and provost (and later became executive vice chancellor); in that role, she helped shape policy in response to Proposition 209, the 1996 California law barring the consideration of race in college admissions.
In various forums, such as the American Chemical Society, the Chautauqua Institute, and the Council for the Advancement of Education, Christ has addressed such issues as women's careers, civil discourse, and the expectations and demands of accountability in the academy. In 2004, she and Mount Holyoke College President Joanne Creighton co-hosted an international conference on issues and challenges in women's education, which also examined women's study of science.
Throughout her administrative career, Christ has remained an active teacher and scholar. She has published two books on Victorian literature and has edited a Norton Critical Edition of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and co-edited the Norton Anthology of English Literature and Victorian Literature and The Victorian Visual Imagination. She continues to teach at Smith, offering seminars on science and literature, and on the arts. In 2004, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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