Clare Haru Crowston received her BA from McGill University in 1988 and her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1996. She began teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in August 1996. She is the author of Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France (Duke University Press, 2013) and Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791 (Duke University Press, 2001), which was awarded the Berkshire Prize for the best first book in history by a woman in North America and the Hagley Prize in business history. She is also the author of numerous book chapters and articles, which have appeared in journals such as Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, French Historical Studies and the International Review of Social History. Along with her co-author Steven L. Kaplan, she has received an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship (2012-2014) for her next project, "Learning How: Apprenticeship in France, 1670-1830".

Crowston is also co-author of the popular textbooks A History of Western Society (10th edition, Bedford St Martin's) and A History of World Societies (9th edition, Bedford St. Martin's). Her work on the textbooks draws on her own research in early modern history as well as regular teaching of the Western Civilization survey and classes on early modern Europe and its relations with the wider world.