Christy Burns, professor of English and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, emerita, died tragically on November 25, 2023, in Kerrville, Texas, at the age of 61. She was a victim of homicide. Her older sister was arrested and charged with the murder.
A native of Pasadena, Texas, Dr. Burns grew up in Laredo. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She then spent a year as a visiting scholar at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University before joining the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University to study comparative literature. There, she earned a Ph.D. in 1992.
Dr. Burns joined the faculty at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1992. She was promoted to associate professor in 1998 and retired in 2020 after 28 years of service to William & Mary.
Dr. Burn’s research focused on James Joyce. She spent the fall semester of 1993 at the James Joyce Foundation in Zürich. She was the author of Gestural Politics: Stereotypes and Parody in Joyce (State University of New York Press, 2000). In addition to Joyce, Professor Burns published numerous articles on Virginia Woolf, Thomas Pynchon, Irish film and literature, and film theory.
Christy was a warm, welcoming senior colleague when I came to William & Mary and a wonderful leader of what was then the “Women’s Studies Program.” I am sorry that her declining health led to her early retirement and move back to Texas, and even more sorry and shocked when I learned of her tragic death in November.