Carol Tecla Christ (born 1944) is the president of Smith College. A scholar of Victorian literature and English Literature in general, she is past editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature. (Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, is a small liberal arts college and one of the Seven Sisters.)

Christ was born in New York City. In 1966, she graduated with high honors from Douglass College, the women's college at Rutgers University. She received a Ph.D. in English from Yale University. She is married to Paul Alpers, a scholar of Renaissance English literature.

In 1970, Christ joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley and was chair of the English department from 1985 to 1988. In 1988 she was appointed dean of humanities. She also served as provost and dean of the College of Letters and Sciences. In 1994, Christ was appointed vice chancellor and provost (and later became executive vice chancellor) at Berkeley. She rejoined the teaching faculty in 2000 before her appointment as Smith's tenth official president in 2002.

On July 2, 2007, Christ was elected to the Merrill Lynch Board of Directors.