Julia A. Walker

Julia A. Walker is Chair of the Performing Arts Department and Professor of English and Performing Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. She holds a PhD and MA from Duke University and a BA from Hanover College. Her research focuses on modern drama, theatrical modernism, and performance theory, with a specialization in 19th- and 20th-century theatre history. Walker’s work examines how performance forms shape cultural understanding of modernity, particularly through the lens of technological and social change.

Her major publications include Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre: Bodies, Voices, Words (2005) and Performance & Modernity: Enacting Change on the Globalizing Stage (2022). The latter explores how performance styles embody and mediate modernity’s transformations. Her article "The Birth of the 'Cool'" analyzes mid-20th-century performance styles. She also collaborates on translations, including Orfeu da Conceição, and is adapting Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World into a dramatic work with support from a Center for Literary Arts fellowship.

Walker teaches courses on modern texts, performance theory, literary analysis, and theatre history. Her current projects emphasize creative practice research, blending scholarly and artistic methods to explore human movement and cultural adaptation.