Wesleyan professors publish a lot of great books—from studies of germs to explorations of Germany, from novels and poetry to math textbooks. Every once in a while, I am startled by how members of our faculty combine personal insight with disciplinary expertise in ways that illuminate their own journeys as teacher-scholars. Christina Crosby (English and feminist, gender and sexuality studies) has written such a book with A Body Undone (about to be published by NYU Press), which I’ve been reading. The book charts how Christina has worked her way back from the disastrous bicycle accident that left her largely paralyzed several years ago. “Working her way back” is certainly an inadequate phrase for the long labor of returning to herself—which also meant returning to the life of the mind, to reading, to writing, and—eventually—to teaching Wesleyan students.
You can read an excerpt from the memoir in the Chronicle Review this week. Here is a link. Congratulations, Professor Crosby!