About

Julia Reinhard Lupton is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Irvine, where she has taught since 1989. She holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies from Yale University and completed her undergraduate studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests encompass Shakespeare, Renaissance Literature, Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, Post-Secularism, Humanities and the Public Sphere, as well as design and everyday life. 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 current project, 'Shakespeare’s Virtues,' explores capacities such as hope, courage, trust, and respect developed through Shakespeare’s plays. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an ACLS Fellowship, and is recognized for her contributions to scholarship and public life. In addition to her academic work, Lupton has held administrative roles such as Interim Director of the UC Humanities Research Institute and co-director of the UCI Shakespeare Center. She has also been involved in arts and cultural programming, founding the Illuminations initiative and organizing events that integrate law, society, and culture in public humanities formats. Lupton is a scholar in residence at various institutions and has served on editorial boards for prominent literary and drama journals. She is also a DIY designer, co-authoring books on design with her twin sister, Ellen Lupton.

Research topics

• Computer science

Selected publications

• Frontmatter

  Penn State University Press eBooks · 2022

  • Philosophy
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction

  2016-04-20

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  Although by the end of the play, the word “harbinger” bears our modern sense of an omen or forerunner (5.6.10), its appearance here is more technical: the harbinger was the court official who preceded the monarch on his or her progresses in order to ensure, among other things, that “the bedrooms had chairs, beds, carpets, and hangings”—tasks gathered under the rubric of “appareling,” the same term used when great halls and banqueting houses were set up as theaters using timber frames and handsome textiles to assemble stages and seating.2 Duncan has just spoken of “investing” Malcolm as heir (1.4.41), one of many references to formal attiring in the play. What is at stake in the harbinger’s charge is another kind of investiture, not of persons but of spaces, which will be decked with special fabrics whose affordances of enclosure and warmth also symbolize magnificence and support the tremulous sense of occasion required by the hosting of a king.3 Duncan will presumably meet his end in a properly outfitted state bed, a confection of elaborate tapestries hung on a wood frame that erected a chamber within the chamber, a holy of holies for royal guests.4 Duncan is killed as a guest in his sleep, a violation of the simultaneously social and somatic forms of trust that the rituals, architecture, and accoutrements of hospitality are designed to cultivate.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Garrett A. Sullivan

  Tulane University

  223 shared

• Joe Campana

  University of Colorado Boulder

  221 shared

• Katherine Eggert

  Oberlin College

  221 shared

• Rebecca Totaro

  Universität Greifswald

  221 shared

• Jessica Wolfe

  221 shared

• Margaret Simon

  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

  221 shared

• Scott Oldenburg

  Tulane University

  221 shared

• Paster Folger

  Rice University

  221 shared

Awards & honors

• Daniel Aldrich Service Award (2024)
• 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)