for Brain Health Alliance Conference: “Academic Ghosting: Towards an Academy of Truth-Telling:

What makes academic ghosting different than romantic ghosting? And why does it seem to hurt so much more? Dr. Alicia Andrzejewski joins us to explain.

Tamora’s pregnant body is a “rude-growing briar,” whispered about in the margins of the play before producing a child that directly challenges the “white-limed walls” of Rome. In short, Shakespeare’s representations of quivering, quickening, and mixed-race children in Titus Andronicus continue to resist our own deep-seated ideologies about reproduction and, consequently, how we understand pregnancy, gender, conflict, and definitions of life

for the Friendsgiving episode: Some scholars argue that what we call non-traditional families aren’t so non-traditional after all. Alicia Andrzejewski has found chosen families and alternative bonds throughout the works of William Shakespeare.

When you study the life of William Shakespeare, one of the first facts you will learn pretty quickly is that his wife, Anne Hathaway was pregnant when she and William were married. Did Anne Hathaway know she was pregnant when she got married? Did William know it, too? And if they did know, what did they use to find out? Here to answer all of these questions and to help us explore the history of prenatal medicine, and 16th century pregnancy tests, is our guest, Alicia Andrzejewski.

Two years ago, the College of William and Mary’s English department welcomed a new professor, Dr Alicia Andrzejewski, who has captivated the attention of students from all backgrounds thanks to her passion for the subject she teaches and her innovative ability to accentuate the modern-day implications of works written long ago. I sat down with Dr Andrzejewski, known affectionately by her students as “Dr A,” over Zoom for an exciting discussion of her path to the College, Shakespeare’s plays from a modern perspective, and the degree to which centuries-old literature can help us think about critical problems that we face today.