Julia Reinhard Lupton

Picture of Julia Reinhard Lupton
Distinguished Professor, English
School of Humanities
Ph.D., Yale University, 1989, Renaissance Studies
Phone: please email
Email: jrlupton@uci.edu
University of California, Irvine
HIB 307
Mail Code: 2650
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Shakespeare; Renaissance Literature; Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, and Post-Secularism; Humanities and the Public Sphere; design and everyday life.
Academic Distinctions
Guggenheim Fellowship, 2013-2014

Faculty, School for Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, 2013

Editorial Boards: Studies in English Literature, MLQ, Exemplaria, Literature and Theology, Renaissance Drama, and Shakespeare Quarterly

MLA: Delegate Assembly; Executive Committee, Seventeenth-Century British Literature

UCI Chancellor's Fellow, 2008-2011

UCI Living Our Values Award, 2009-2010

Edward Lynton Award for Scholarship and Public Life, 2005

ACLS Fellowship, 2004-2005
Research Abstract
Julia Lupton is the author or co-author of five books on Shakespeare, including "Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology," "Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life," and "Shakespeare Dwelling: Designs for the Theater of Life." Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and an ACLS Fellowship. At UCI, she is a Lauds and Laurels honoree and the recipient of several teaching awards. She is a former Trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America. Her current book project, “Shakespeare’s Virtues,” explores the many capacities developed by Shakespeare’s plays, including hope, courage, trust, and respect. She has taught at UCI since 1989.

As Interim Director of the UC Humanities Research Institute (2022-23), Julia Lupton is overseeing grant-making and contributing to strategic planning during a period of transition.

As co-director of the UCI Shakespeare Center, Julia Lupton organizes seminars and lectures for UC Irvine’s New Swan Shakespeare Festival. She also runs a county-wide series of book clubs and helps create innovative events such as The Hamlet Trial, featuring Dean Erwin Chemerinsky (Berkeley Law) and Dean Song Richardson (UCI Law). The event combines law, society and culture in a public humanities format.

Julia Lupton was the founding director of Illuminations: The Chancellor's Arts and Culture Initiative, a program launched by Chancellor Howard Gillman to provide arts and cultural programming for over 10,000 ticketholders on campus and in the community each year. During her tenure as director, she helped bring authors such as Alice Sebold, Colson Whitehead, and Viet Thanh Nguyen to UC Irvine. She also helped design creative programming around cooking and food, such as the popular Conversation Kitchen program. In her own work and in her administrative roles, she promotes experiential learning that engages the senses and gets students out of their seats.

Julia is a DIY designer who has learned basic techniques from her twin sister, designer Ellen Lupton. She uses design every day in her work promoting the energy and ideas of UCI. She and Ellen wrote two design books together, DIY Kids and Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things.
Julia has a PhD in Renaissance Studies from Yale University. She did her undergraduate work at the Johns Hopkins University. She has been a scholar in residence at many universities and research centers, including Harvard University, Kingston College London, Cornell University, the University of Alberta, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Publications
Shakespeare Dwelling: Designs for the Theater of Life, University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Thinking with Shakespeare: Essays on Politics and Life, University of Chicago Press, 2011
Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology, University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UP, 1996)
co-authored with Kenneth Reinhard, After Oedipus (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993)
Articles on Shakespeare, religion and literature, Spenser, and psychoanalysis.
Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things (St. Martin's Press, 2009), co-authored with Ellen Lupton
DIY Kids (Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), co-authored with Ellen Lupton.
Grants
ACLS
Guggenheim 2013-14
Professional Societies
Trustee, Shakespeare Association of America
Modern Language Association
Research Centers
UCI Shakespeare Center, co-directed with Eli Simon, Chancellor's Professor of Drama
Interim Director, UC Humanities Research Institute
Last updated
10/12/2022