Dr Diarmuid Hester

Position
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English

Department / College
Faculty of English

About
I'm a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English. I came to Cambridge in September 2017, after a short stint as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sussex where I also completed my PhD. I hold MA degrees in philosophy from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy and in Sexual Dissidence and Cultural Change from the University of Sussex, where I studied with the late Alan Sinfield. 

My work is broadly concerned with American culture from 1950, with a particular focus on the writing, art, photography, film, and performance work of New York City. I’m especially interested in how queer artists and writers contributed to Downtown Manhattan’s uniquely vibrant scene and the impact of AIDS on the city's queer subcultures.

At present, I’m writing a critical biography of the American Queercore writer Dennis Cooper for the University of Iowa Press. I am also at work on a counterhistory of New York in the twentieth century that considers the city’s literary and visual cultures from the vantage point of waste, broadly conceived. 

Research Interests

Art and Culture of New York City in the 20th century, vis-à-vis, in particular: Downtown New York writing, art, photography, film, and performance 1950-present; New York School poetry and its legacies; literary and artistic communities; queer subcultures; urban architecture and identity; waste, politics and culture of.