Community Tributes to Brianne Waychoff
It is with a heavy heart that I write to share that my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Brianne Waychoff, passed away from 9/11-related kidney cancer on Monday, July 25, 2022. She was forty-three. Dr. Waychoff was a brilliant professor, colleague, scholar, artist, performer, and activist, an interdisciplinary powerhouse, and all-around incredible changemaker in the world.
Dr. Brianne Waychoff was associate professor of communication and the co-coordinator of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York (BMCC). Her BA was in theatre and her MA was in women’s and gender studies from the University of Northern Iowa. She earned a PhD in communication studies with an emphasis in performance studies and minor in women’s and gender studies from Louisiana State University. Dr. Waychoff published in a range of scholarly journals, including Text and Performance Quarterly, The Journal of Pacific Affairs, and Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies. They were coeditor of Women’s Studies Quarterly, published by the Feminist Press. She also was chair of the Community College Caucus of the National Women’s Studies Association, chair of the nominating committee for the Performance Studies Division of the National Communication Association, and a member of the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender. They served on the editorial boards of Text and Performance Quarterly, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and Women and Language. Her research interests were women’s studies, speech, social justice issues, queer theory, performance studies, media studies, gender studies, gender and sexuality studies, feminist theory, disability studies, cultural diversity, and communication studies. Dr. Waychoff also cocreate the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies program and major at BMCC, where they taught Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies, Gender and Communication, Gender and Women’s Studies Capstone, Fundamentals of Public Speaking, Oral Interpretation, and Mass Media, among other courses. She presented performance work at professional venues and festivals throughout the United States, was invited guest artist at several institutions in the US and abroad, and won grants and other awards for her scholarly and creative work. Dr. Waychoff’s commitment to gender justice was acknowledged nationally when she was invited by the White House to participate in the United State of Women Summit in 2016, celebrating the accomplishments of women and girls and making plans for the future.
Besides Dr. Waychoff’s impressive professional work, they were a kind, compassionate, empathetic, and deeply loving person. I met her at the panel I organized to bring Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies chairs, directors, and coordinators together across the CUNY campuses to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the WGSS program at Kingsborough Community College in 2019. She was a vibrant part of the panel, along with Dr. Antonio (Jay) Pastrana, Prof. Jen Gaboury, Dr. Mobina Hashmi, Dr. JV Fuqua, Dr. Laura Westengard, Dr. Jerilyn Fisher, Dr. Allia Abdullah-Matta, Dr. Jacqueline Jones, and me. Even that day, Brianne offered to help blow up balloons with the students and me to set up. I met them again the next semester over juice and dressed down in T-shirts and overalls with Dr. Martens and tattoos out in order to discuss building a pipeline for WGSS students from the AA to MA level with the hope of a PhD in the future. The following semester they were one of four CUNY faculty, along with Dr. Paisley Currah, Dr. Yaari Felber-Seligman, and me, to testify at the City Council’s hearing on trans and nonbinary rights and funding for students and faculty at CUNY. Doing this work together, we decided we wanted to keep doing feminist and LGBTQ scholarship together. We applied to be the next editors of WSQ. When Brianne and I started working for WSQ in September 2020, my beloved mother died unexpectedly from a heart attack, just three weeks into my tenure. I will never forget how Brianne gave me permission to take off time, to go slower, to grieve. They just got it. I also will never forget how they offered to come to my mother’s graveside service upstate to be by my side, along with my close friends, family, and wife, and allow me to pay respects to my mother. She would text me to check in and send me pictures of her French feminist theorist cats Luce and Jules when I was deep in grief from losing my mom, then uncle, and then dog all within a year. Their kindness and empathy just helped everything. While we had not known each other that long, we talked very regularly for the journal, as well as about our lives, and she showed up so hard for the journal, students, faculty, and me. It pulled me back up. I gave back to them when they were down—when their parents’ house was destroyed, when their grandmother died, when they were diagnosed with cancer after driving cross-country to help a mutual friend Dr. JV Fuqua move, and when they were in and out of the hospital. My hand was out ready and steady to pull them up, too. I sent them gifts, picked up their work, encouraged them to rest, checked in over calls, texts, memes, and animal pictures, and sent them a stuffed animal cat when no flowers and no visitors were allowed due to COVID. It was our critical friendship and language of care. I really wish I could have done more for them. I really wish life were not so unfair to such a generous, thoughtful, and sweet person. However, while I am very sad she passed far too young, I am relieved she is at peace, not in pain. I will always remember the down-to-earth conversations we had about liking to mow the lawn, rest as resistance, weird feminist art shares, cats on doors and in strange places, riot grrrl faves, the costumes they made for their sibling, and dancing into work meetings with “Staying Alive” in our heads.
Dr. Waychoff opened doors for CUNY students and faculty to do feminist, LGBTQIA+, and social justice work. I am honored I could work with them over the past two years to coedit WSQ. Even during a pandemic and with advanced cancer, Brianne was an intellectual rock star. She worked so hard and with so much love for the sake of feminist scholarship, even when she was so sick and doing Zoom meetings at Sloan Kettering. I will always remember their vision for a better world, commitment to creativity and art, their encouragement of community college students and faculty, remarkable diligence and devotion to scholarship and the field of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and practice of diversity, inclusion, and equity. It is unfortunate that WGSS graduate students at the Graduate Center will not be able to take Feminist Texts and Theories with Dr. Waychoff, but Dr. Dána-Ain Davis and Dr. JV Fuqua will keep them alive in spirit at the Graduate Center this year. We will be doing several tributes for them, including in the Nonbinary issue we were supposed edit together with Dr. JV Fuqua and Dr. Marquis Bey.