Julia Fawcett's research looks at the origins of concepts of privacy and publicity—as well as of domesticity, imperialism, and urban space—in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature and performance in the circum-Atlantic world. Her first book, Spectacular Disappearances: Celebrity and Privacy, 1696-1801 (University of Michigan Press, 2016), was a Finalist for the George Freedley Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association. It examines the performance and literary strategies that England’s first celebrities used to protect their private lives despite always being in the public eye—and how their strategies might help us to navigate a world in which social media has eroded the distinctions between private lives and public events. Her second book, Movable Londons: Performance and the Making of the Modern City, is due out from University of Michigan Press in Fall 2025. The book explores how those who did not or could not own property (including women, immigrants, enslaved people, servants, and religious minorities) shaped the spaces and performances of Restoration London after the Great Fire of 1666. Fawcett has served as a dramaturge in New York and as a scholar-in-residence at Harbourfront World Stage in Toronto; her essays have appeared in PMLA, Theatre Survey, Eighteenth Century Studies, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and Modern Drama.
Education: Ph.D. in English Literature, Yale University
