Michael Hunter received an MA in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a PhD in Drama from Stanford University in 2007. His dissertation, Bodies at Work in Bodies of Work: Ronald Firbank and the Corpus of Modernist Authorship, reflects the range of his intellectual project: ostensibly focusing on the peculiar literary and dramatic works of the eccentric British writer Ronald Firbank, the dissertation considers such diverse areas as the relation between aesthetic output and corporeality, the historical emergence of sexual identities, the cultural poetics of skin, and contemporary staging practices.
Michael has taught a number of courses at Stanford, including classes in Drama and Queer Studies. His current book project is a development of one of those courses, which examines the ways in which contemporary Queer Theory articulates a number of themes and concerns already examined, albeit in an embodied form, in the avant-garde performance forms of the twentieth century.
In addition to writing and teaching, Michael is also a director: this Fall he begins work on a production of Heiner Müller’s Desolate Shore/Medeamaterial/Landscape with Argonauts. Michael lives in San Francisco.