In Memoriam: Christina Crosby, 1953-2021

Christina Crosby, professor of English and professor of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, died on January 5. She was 67 years old and suffered from pancreatic cancer.

A native of Huntington, Pennsylvania, her father was a professor of history, and her mother was a professor of home economics at Juniata College. Dr. Crosby was a graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she majored in English. She earned a P.D. in English at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Crosby joined the faculty at Wesleyan University in 1982.

Professor Crosby was perhaps best known for her memoir A Body, Undone: Living on After Great Pain (New York University Press, 2016). The book begins with the life-altering 2003 bicycling accident in which she broke her neck shortly after her 50th birthday.

Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, said: “Christina Crosby’s death is a profound loss for the Wesleyan community. After her accident, she wrote that ‘If I am to continue living, I must be open to being swept away.’ Not only did she stay open, she found ways to open her students, colleagues, and friends to being swept away by literature, by activism, and by passionate engagement with art and with the world.”