Christina Crosby

{{Infobox writer

| image = "To the Manor Born" (Christina Crosby with Moxie).jpg

| birth_date = September 2, 1953

| birth_place = Huntingdon, Pennsylvania

| education = Swarthmore College (BA, 1974)
Brown University (PhD, 1982)

| caption = Crosby with her dog in 2016

| death_date = {{Death date and age|2021|01|05|1953|09|02}}

| death_place = Middletown, Connecticut

| occupation = Scholar, author

| partner = Janet Jakobsen

| notable_works= The Ends of History
A Body, Undone

}}

Christina Crosby (2 September 1953 – 5 January 2021) was an American scholar and writer, with particular interests in 19th-century British literature and disability studies. She is the author of The Ends of History: Victorians and "The Woman's Question", which considers the place of history and women in 19th-century British literature, and A Body, Undone, a memoir about her life after she was paralyzed in a cycling accident in 2003. She spent her career at Wesleyan University, where she was a professor of English and of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies.

Early life and education

Crosby was born in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on September 2, 1953. Her father, Kenneth Crosby, was a professor of history at Juniata College.{{cite web|url=http://lancasteronline.com/obituaries/jefferson-crosby/article_3f290358-01b9-59d8-9db7-9a0c6248fabe.html|title=Jefferson Crosby|date=8 January 2010|work=LancasterOnline|access-date=29 February 2016|archive-date=December 13, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191213060552/http://lancasteronline.com/obituaries/jefferson-crosby/article_3f290358-01b9-59d8-9db7-9a0c6248fabe.html|url-status=live}} Her mother, Jane Miller Crosby, worked as a professor of home economics at Juniata.{{Cite web |url=http://legacy.juniata.edu/services/library/friends/friendsnews/FOLNewsletterFall2010.pdf |title=Memories of Jane and Ken Crosby |access-date=2016-02-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151222074907/http://legacy.juniata.edu/services/library/friends/friendsnews/FOLNewsletterFall2010.pdf |archive-date=2015-12-22 |url-status=dead |page=2}} Crosby had an older brother Jefferson (born {{circa|1952}}).

Crosby attended Huntingdon public schoolsCrosby C. A Body, Undone, Living On After Great Pain. NYU Press; 2016 P. 122 and graduated from Swarthmore College,{{cite web|url=http://www.wesleyan.edu/english/people/index.html|title=Faculty, English Department - Wesleyan University|access-date=29 February 2016|archive-date=September 7, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190907081036/https://www.wesleyan.edu/english/people/index.html|url-status=live}} in 1974 with a major in English.Crosby C. A Body, Undone, Living On After Great Pain. NYU Press; 2016 P. 49 While at Swarthmore, she co-founded Swarthmore Gay Liberation, and was also active in Swarthmore Women's Liberation.{{cite journal|last=Giardinelli|first=Alisa|title=The Quiet of a Spinning Top|url=https://bulletin.swarthmore.edu/bulletin-issue-archive/wp-content/archived_issues_pdf/Bulletin_2000_12.pdf|page=13|journal=Swarthmore College Bulletin|date=December 2000|access-date=January 8, 2021|archive-date=November 29, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201129021158/https://bulletin.swarthmore.edu/bulletin-issue-archive/wp-content/archived_issues_pdf/Bulletin_2000_12.pdf|url-status=live}}Crosby C. A Body, Undone, Living On After Great Pain. NYU Press; 2016 P. 163 She wrote a column called "The Feminist Slant" in the student newspaper.

In 1975, Crosby enrolled as a graduate student at Brown University and began studying for a Ph.D. in English,{{cite web|url=http://www.sojournerri.org/40th-anniversary/|title=40th Anniversary Campaign|work=Sojourner House|access-date=29 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303231933/http://www.sojournerri.org/40th-anniversary/|archive-date=3 March 2016|url-status=dead}} completing her degree in 1982.{{cite web|title=Pembroke Center Associates Newsletter|date=2007|url=https://www.brown.edu/research/pembroke-center/sites/brown.edu.research.pembroke-center/files/uploads/Fall07NL.pdf|page=7|access-date=February 29, 2016|archive-date=October 16, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161016215537/https://www.brown.edu/research/pembroke-center/sites/brown.edu.research.pembroke-center/files/uploads/Fall07NL.pdf|url-status=live}} At Brown, Crosby participated in a socialist feminist caucus, organizing around issues like domestic violence. They opened a socialist feminist caucus that focused on issues like domestic violence with a hotline and a new women's shelter, Sojourner House, that was among the first in the US. Crosby also met Elizabeth Weed, at the time the director of Brown's Sarah Doyle Women's Center; they became partners for 17 years.

Career and research

After her PhD, Crosby took up a position as an assistant professor in the English department at Wesleyan University.{{cite web|url=http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/people/christina-crosby|title=Christina Crosby|access-date=29 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305160615/http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/people/christina-crosby|archive-date=5 March 2016|url-status=dead}} She immediately joined the student–faculty collective dedicated to strengthening the women's studies program, which had begun in 1979,{{cite web|url=http://hudsonreview.com/2016/01/getting-a-life-recent-american-memoirs/|title=Getting a Life: Recent American Memoirs - The Hudson Review|access-date=29 February 2016|archive-date=March 5, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305093336/http://hudsonreview.com/2016/01/getting-a-life-recent-american-memoirs/|url-status=live}}{{cite web|url=http://www.wesleyan.edu/english/major/history.html|title=Department History, English Department - Wesleyan University|access-date=29 February 2016|archive-date=February 29, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160229213816/http://mailto:aconnell@wesleyan.edu/english/major/history.html|url-status=live}} and remained a core member of this program. She was promoted to associate professor{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9EjFBQAAQBAJ&q=%22associate+professor%22+%22christina+crosby%22&pg=PT653|title=Feminists Theorize the Political|isbn=9781135769635|access-date=29 February 2016|last1=Butler|first1=Judith|last2=Scott|first2=Joan W.|date=28 October 2013|publisher=Routledge |archive-date=January 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210108161403/https://books.google.com/books?id=9EjFBQAAQBAJ&q=%22associate+professor%22+%22christina+crosby%22&pg=PT653|url-status=live}} in 1989 and to professor in 1996. As of 2020, she was professor of English and professor of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies.{{cite web |url=https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/ccrosby/profile.html |title=Christina Crosby |publisher=Wesleyan University |year=2020 |accessdate=January 8, 2021 |archive-date=October 28, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028180851/https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/ccrosby/profile.html |url-status=live }} At Wesleyan in the 1990s, Crosby taught the writer Maggie Nelson.{{Cite magazine|last=Weinstein|first=Michael M.|date=April 11, 2016|title=A Professor's Memoir of Life Inside a Ravaged Body|url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-professors-memoir-of-life-inside-a-ravaged-body|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210105191751/https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-professors-memoir-of-life-inside-a-ravaged-body|archive-date=January 5, 2021|access-date=2021-01-07|magazine=The New Yorker|language=en-us}} The two developed a friendship and each later wrote about the other—Nelson about Crosby in The Argonauts (2015) and Crosby about Nelson in The Body, Undone (2016).

In 1984–1985 Crosby held a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for college teachers;{{cite web|url=http://www.wesleyan.edu/english/people/achievements.html|title=Faculty Achievements, English Department - Wesleyan University|access-date=29 February 2016|archive-date=February 29, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160229202503/http://www.wesleyan.edu/english/people/achievements.html|url-status=live}} she was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, 1990–1991;{{Cite web|date=2019-12-09|title=Christina Crosby|url=https://www.ias.edu/scholars/christina-crosby|access-date=2021-01-08|publisher=Institute for Advanced Study|language=en|archive-date=January 8, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210108161429/https://www.ias.edu/scholars/christina-crosby|url-status=live}} and she held faculty fellowships at the Wesleyan Center for the Humanities in the fall of 1986 and 1996.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DEiwgToM-O8C&q=%22christina+crosby%22+Wesleyan+Center+for+the+Humanities&pg=PR10|title=The Ends of History|isbn=9780415623049|access-date=29 February 2016|last1=Crosby|first1=Christina|date=9 October 2012|publisher=Routledge }}

As of 2020, Crosby stated her research interests as disability studies, a field she entered after her 2003 accident, with a focus on grief and mourning.{{cite journal |first=Christina |last=Crosby|title=Faithful to the Contemplation of Bones: Disability and Irremediable Grief |journal=South Atlantic Quarterly |year=2019 |volume=118 |pages=615–641 |doi=10.1215/00382876-7616187 |s2cid=201382372 }} Her earlier work focused on 19th-century British literature.

Writing

= ''The Ends of History'' =

Crosby's first book, The Ends of History: Victorians and "The Woman's Question" (Routledge, 1991), focuses on the way in which 19th-century British thinkers' understanding of the world primarily through the lens of history relies on women being excluded as "the Other". It was based on her graduate dissertation at Brown.{{Cite news|last=Seelye|first=Katharine Q.|date=2021-01-27|title=Christina Crosby, 67, Dies; Feminist Scholar Wrote of Becoming Disabled|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/christina-crosby-dead.html|access-date=2021-01-27|issn=0362-4331|archive-date=January 27, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210127003910/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/christina-crosby-dead.html|url-status=live}} The book includes analysis of a wide range of Victorian works, including fiction – George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, William Thackeray's Henry Esmond, Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit, Charlotte Brontë's Villette, as well as the play The Frozen Deep by Wilkie Collins – alongside historical, theological, philosophical and journalistic works, including Thomas Macaulay's The History of England, Patrick Fairbairn's Hermeneutical Manual and The Typology of Scripture, and letters published in The Morning Chronicle by the journalist Henry Mayhew. Crosby states in her introduction that all the disparate works she discusses "participate in a widespread discourse about history".Crosby, The Ends of History: Victorians and "The Woman's Question", p. 1

Ann Hobart, in a detailed review for Modern Philology, considers The Ends of History to make an important contribution to Victorian studies, praising its "stunning new readings of important texts from a coherent and richly informed theoretical perspective", but believes it to be less important as a work of feminist criticism. Hobart considers Crosby to attack the idea that men's writing can never be significant for feminist thought, highlighting the fact that Crosby considers Daniel Deronda, a novel written by a woman, to represent "masculinist discourse", while the works of male writers Thackeray and Mayhew present a more feminine standpoint. James C. Q. Stewart, writing in The Review of English Studies, praises the book's "fresh and courageous thought" but criticizes perceived methodological weaknesses.{{cite journal |first=James C. Q. |last=Stewart |title=Review of Problems for Feminist Criticism by Sally Minogue; The Ends of History: Victorians and 'The Woman Question{{'}} by Christina Crosby |journal=The Review of English Studies |volume=44 |year=1993 |pages=300–301 |doi=10.1093/res/XLIV.174.300 |jstor=519243 }} Tricia Lootens describes the book in the journal Victorian Studies as an "ambitious, stimulating work", but comments on the "apparently uncritical references to literary legends or to hierarchies based on the values of high culture."{{cite journal|last=Lootens|first=Tricia|title=Review of The Ends of History|date=1992|journal=Victorian Studies|volume=35|issue=3|page=318|id={{ProQuest|1304755284}}}} Further reviews were published in the Journal of Historical Geography,Rose, Gillian. "+ 186.£ 9.99 paperback Christina Crosby, The Ends of History: Victorians and "The Woman Question", Routledge, London (1991), p. x+ 232.£ 9.99 paperback Robert Young, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, Routledge, London (1990), p. viii." Journal of Historical Geography 17.3 (1991): 344-346.

Albion{{Cite journal|last=Long|first=Joanne|date=1992|title=Review of The Ends of History|journal=Albion|language=en|volume=24|issue=3|pages=517–518|doi=10.2307/4050997|jstor=4050997|issn=0095-1390}} and The George Eliot, George Henry Lewes Newsletter.{{Cite journal|last=Wolfreys|first=Julian|date=1991|editor-last=Crosby|editor-first=Christina|title=History Undone|journal=The George Eliot, George Henry Lewes Newsletter|issue=18/19|pages=79–86|issn=0953-0754|jstor=43470799}}

= ''A Body, Undone'' =

In February 2016, New York University Press published A Body, Undone: Living on after Great Pain, a memoir motivated by the serious spinal cord injury she sustained at age 50 following a bicycle accident.{{Cite web|last=McLemee|first=Scott|date=May 11, 2016|title=Review of Christina Crosby, "A Body, Undone: Living on After Great Pain (A Memoir)"|url=https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/05/11/review-christina-crosby-body-undone-living-after-great-pain-memoir|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160512112339/https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/05/11/review-christina-crosby-body-undone-living-after-great-pain-memoir|archive-date=May 12, 2016|access-date=2021-01-07|website=Inside Higher Ed|language=en}}{{Cite journal|last=Patsavas|first=Alyson|date=2017-03-07|title=Review of A Body Undone: Living on After Great Pain|url=https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5423|journal=Disability Studies Quarterly|language=en|volume=37|issue=1|doi=10.18061/dsq.v37i1.5423|issn=2159-8371|access-date=January 7, 2021|archive-date=November 24, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201124190109/https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5423|url-status=live|doi-access=free}}{{Cite web|last=D'Aoust|first=Renée E.|date=May 7, 2016|title=Guest Review: 'A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain'|url=https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/education-oronte-churm/guest-review-%E2%80%98-body-undone-living-after-great-pain%E2%80%99|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803053709/https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/education-oronte-churm/guest-review-%E2%80%98-body-undone-living-after-great-pain%E2%80%99|archive-date=August 3, 2020|access-date=2021-01-07|website=Inside Higher Ed|language=en}}{{Cite magazine|last=Donegan|first=Moira|date=2016-06-29|title=Christina Crosby's Impossible Memoir of Pain|magazine=The New Republic|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/134694/christina-crosbys-impossible-memoir-pain|access-date=2021-01-08|issn=0028-6583|archive-date=November 8, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108092931/https://newrepublic.com/article/134694/christina-crosbys-impossible-memoir-pain|url-status=live}} The book was written using voice recognition software. The title draws on Emily Dickinson's poem "After great pain", which also serves as the book's epigraph.{{Cite web|last=Charles|first=Anne|date=2016-10-19|title='A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain' by Christina Crosby|url=https://www.lambdaliterary.org/2016/10/a-body-undone-living-on-after-great-pain-by-christina-crosby/|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201102053250/https://www.lambdaliterary.org/2016/10/a-body-undone-living-on-after-great-pain-by-christina-crosby/|archive-date=November 2, 2020|access-date=2021-01-07|website=Lambda Literary|language=en}} Writing for Lambda Literary, Anne Charles observed that the book dwells on pain, refusing "the typical disability narrative's trajectory of improvement and uplift, affirming instead an existence of ongoing literal pain and psychological stress"—a full chapter on negotiating bowel movements with her paralysis. That said, the final chapter records Crosby regaining her ability to hold a pencil, of which she says, through tears, "I have my life back"; Charles reads this moment as encapsulating "struggle to come to terms with impossibly challenging circumstances." In The New Yorker, Michael Weinstein also reads the book as a coming to terms for Crosby herself, comparing the book to Judith Butler's Giving an Account of Oneself, in which Butler emphasizes self-awareness as something made by perceiving the views of others may have of us; others' views of Crosby shift radically after her accident, to the point of misgendering her (once a "femme-y butch" lesbian, in her wheelchair she is mistaken for a man) and Weinstein reads The Body, Undone as Crosby's effort to process the dramatic changes and "make her new self intelligible to herself, even in the wake of changes that have made her almost unrecognizable".

A Body, Undone was unanimously selected as Wesleyan University's First Year Matters Program common reading in 2018.{{Cite web|title=First Year Matters - Common Read Discussion|url=http://videos.wesleyan.edu/detail/video/5804344983001|access-date=2021-01-07|website=videos.wesleyan.edu|language=en-us|archive-date=November 5, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201105212456/http://videos.wesleyan.edu/detail/video/5804344983001|url-status=live}}

Personal life

Crosby described herself as a lesbianCrosby, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, pp. 5, 55 and a feminist.Crosby, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, pp. 20, 153 Since 1997, her partner was Janet Jakobsen, a professor at Barnard College.{{Cite web|last=Rubenstein|first=Lauren|title=Crosby Honored at Barnard College Event|url=http://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2015/03/18/crosbybarnard/|access-date=2021-01-08|website=News @ Wesleyan|language=en-US|publisher=Wesleyan University|date=March 18, 2015|archive-date=March 17, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160317164809/http://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2015/03/18/crosbybarnard/|url-status=live}}

Crosby broke her neck in a bicycle accident on October 1, 2003, at age 50.{{cite web|url=http://wesleyanargus.com/2004/04/30/prof-crosby-working-toward-recuperation/|title=The Wesleyan Argus - Prof. Crosby working toward recuperation|work=The Wesleyan Argus|date=April 30, 2004 |access-date=29 February 2016|archive-date=March 5, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305101509/http://wesleyanargus.com/2004/04/30/prof-crosby-working-toward-recuperation/|url-status=live}} After a month in Hartford Hospital, four months in a rehabilitation hospital, and a year and a half of physical and occupational therapy, she returned to work half-time in September 2005, remaining quadriplegic in the long term.Crosby, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, pp. 4, 199

Crosby's brother Jefferson, who was an attorney, also became quadriplegic after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his twenties. He died in 2010.

Crosby died from pancreatic cancer on January 5, 2021, in Middletown, Connecticut.{{Cite news|last=|first=|date=January 10, 2021|title=Christina Crosby|work=Middletown Press|url=https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/MiddletownPress/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=197475053&_ga=2.43211169.547174783.1610397314-1059398818.1610397314|url-status=live|access-date=|via=Legacy.com|archive-date=February 15, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210215100835/https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/MiddletownPress/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=197475053&_ga=2.43211169.547174783.1610397314-1059398818.1610397314}}

Selected publications

= Books =

{{Cite book|last=Crosby|first=Christina|title=The Ends of History: Victorians and "The Woman Question"|date=1991|publisher=Routledge|isbn=0-415-00935-9|oclc=21146745}}{{Cite journal|last=Hobart|first=Ann|date=1994|title=Review of The Ends of History: Victorians and "The Woman Question"|journal=Modern Philology|volume=91|issue=3|pages=381–385|issn=0026-8232|jstor=438447|doi=10.1086/392181}}
{{Cite book|last=Crosby|first=Christina|title=A Body, Undone: Living on After Great Pain|isbn=978-1-4798-0804-5|publisher=New York University Press|date=2016|oclc=936177779|jstor=j.ctt1803zq1}}{{Cite magazine|last=Weinstein|first=Michael M.|date=2016-04-11|title=A Professor's Memoir of Life Inside a Ravaged Body|url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-professors-memoir-of-life-inside-a-ravaged-body|access-date=2021-01-08|magazine=The New Yorker|language=en-us|archive-date=January 5, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210105191751/https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-professors-memoir-of-life-inside-a-ravaged-body|url-status=live}}{{Cite journal|last=Jackson|first=Kathy Merlock|date=March 2017|title=Review of A Body Undone|journal=The Journal of American Culture|language=en|volume=40|issue=1|pages=78–79|doi=10.1111/jacc.12682}}

= Articles and book chapters =

{{cite journal |last=Crosby|first=Christina |title=Charlotte Brontë's Haunted Text |journal=SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 |volume=24 |year=1984 |issue=4 |pages=701–715|doi=10.2307/450487|jstor=450487}}
{{Cite book|last=Crosby|first=Christina|chapter=Dealing with Differences|title=Feminists Theorize the Political|date=2013-10-28|orig-year=1992|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-76956-7|editor-last1=Butler|editor-first1=Judith|editor-link=Judith Butler|language=en|doi=10.4324/9780203723999|editor-last2=Scott|editor-first2=Joan W.|editor-link2=Joan Wallach Scott}}

References

=Sources=

Christina Crosby. [https://books.google.com/books?id=DEiwgToM-O8C The Ends of History: Victorians and "The Woman Question"] (Routledge; [1991], 2012) ({{isbn|9780415623049}})
Christina Crosby. [https://books.google.com/books?id=1lAxDwAAQBAJ A Body, Undone: Living on after Great Pain] (New York University Press; [2016], 2017) ({{isbn|9781479853168}})