Lecture: Living On as a Quadriplegic

Address by Distinguished Wesleyan University Professor Christina Crosby

Dr. Christina Crosby

ALBANY (November 3, 2016) — In A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain (NYU Press, 2016), Wesleyan University Professor Dr. Christina Crosby recounts her struggle to live and work in academia as a quadriplegic after a devastating bicycling accident broke her neck 13 years ago.

Crosby, a distinguished professor of English and feminist, gender and sexuality studies at Wesleyan, will read from her memoir and discuss LGBT and disability issues in a talk at The College of Saint Rose.

Crosby will deliver her remarks Wednesday, November 9, from 1:15 p.m. until 2:30 p.m. in the Hubbard Interfaith Sanctuary, 959 Madison Ave., Albany, New York. The lecture, the College’s English Department 2016 Distinguished Speaker, is free and open to the public.

On October 1, 2003, Crosby was three miles into an early evening bicycle ride, pursuing her goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. As she crested a hill, a tire caught a branch in the spokes, which instantly threw her to the pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow and her head snapped back. In that split second, Crosby was paralyzed.

In her book, Crosby puts into words a broken body that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She writes about a body shot through with neurological pain, disoriented in time and space, incapacitated by paralysis and deadened sensation. She will also discuss the alternative treatments that she has turned to, including one that’s hot in the media right now: CBD oil. To address this foreign body, Crosby calls upon the pleasures of narrative, critical feminist and queer thinking and the concentrated language of lyric poetry.

Copies of Crosby’s book will be available for purchase.

For more information about the November 9 lecture, contact Dr. May Caroline Chan in the Saint Rose English Department at chanm@strose.edu or phone 518-454-2824.

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