About

My name is Alexandra E. LaGrand (she/her/hers) and I am a Ph.D Candidate in English from North Carolina.

My research is at the intersection of theatre history, women’s and gender studies, and textual studies. I study women’s genderfluid stage roles in Shakespearean and British Romantic drama, and investigate how these roles were edited for performance.

I am currently pursuing a Ph.D in English with graduate certificates in Digital Humanities and Women’s and Gender Studies at Texas A&M University, where I was named a College of Liberal Arts University Merit Fellow, a Doctoral Fellow with the World Shakespeare Bibliography Online, a Doctoral Fellow with Early Modern Dramatic Paratexts, and a Kelsey Fellow in Book History with Texas A&M’s Cushing Memorial Library & Archives.

In August 2023, I launched my digital humanities project, Points Like A Man: The Shakespearean Breeches Performance Catalogue, 1660-1900. My project aims to curate individual records of women’s Shakespearean breeches performances.

In May 2021, I earned my M.Litt degree in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin University. My master’s thesis was entitled “‘From the text of Shakspeare’: William Charles Macready, King Lear, and the Theatrical Antiquarianism of Locrine.” For this thesis, I was awarded Mary Baldwin’s Andrew Gurr Award for Outstanding Thesis and the Southeastern Theatre Conference’s Young Scholars Award. Portions of this thesis were selected for publication in Southern Utah University Press’s peer-reviewed Journal of the Wooden O.

In May 2018, I earned my B.A. in English and Dramatic Art, with a minor in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I graduated as an Honors Laureate with distinction after having earned Dean’s list honors every semester. I was also the recipient of several merit awards, including a 2018 Chancellor’s Award, the 2018 Alpha Psi Omega Award for Collegiate Achievement in Theatre, the 2017 Panhellenic Excellence Award, the 2016 Anne L. and S. Epes Robinson Honors Fellowship, and the 2016 Lillian Chason Scholarship for Dramatic Art.

You can find me on Bluesky at @aelagrand.bsky.social. I mostly post about Shakespeare, nineteenth-century theatre history, and cats.