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Rude Growing Briars: Queer Pregnancy in Shakespeare – FREE Lecture Series

March 7, 2021 @ 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Rude Growing Briars: Queer Pregnancy in Shakespeare - FREE Lecture Series
Join us for a free Zoom lecture with Professor Alicia Andrzejewski!

About this Event

After registering, check the “My Tickets” section in your account to locate the Zoom link. All who register will also receive a REPLAY.

In this talk, Dr. Andrzejewski will bring together queer and feminist theory; performance studies; and archival research to address a conspicuous absence in queer readings of Shakespeare’s work: the pregnant body.

While early modern scholars tend to read representations of pregnancy as commensurate with heterosexual sex, desire, and partnership, Alicia focuses on one of Shakespeare’s early plays, Titus Andronicus, to argue that representations of pregnancy in Shakespeare’s canon still resist heteronormative structures that dictate what pregnancy should look like or how a pregnant person should act.

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.

Alicia Andrzejewski is an Assistant Professor in William & Mary’s English department. She is a scholar of early modern literature and culture; queer, feminist, and critical race theory; and the medical humanities. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, and the online publication Synapsis. Her current book project, Rude-Growing Briars: Queer Pregnancy in Shakespeare’s Plays, argues for the transgressive force of pregnancy in his oeuvre and the expansive ways in which early modern people thought about the pregnant body.

The public replay will be for a limited time. SD Shakespeare Society members will have unlimited access to this talk in their account. Join today!

Details

Date:
March 7, 2021
Time:
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Event Category:
Event Tags:
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Website:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rude-growing-briars-queer-pregnancy-in-shakespeare-free-lecture-series-tickets-141568438009

Venue

online

Guest events: Unless specifically mentioned, The San Diego Shakespeare Society is not involved with any guest events published to our calendar. (Our events will have the notation of “SDSS event.) Inclusion here is neither an endorsement nor a recommendation of other events.