Michael Warner

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Michael Warner

Occupation	Professor Author
Known for	Literary Criticism and Theory

Michael Warner is a literary critic and social theorist. He is Senior Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, see faculty. He also writes for Art Forum, The Nation, The Advocate, and The Village Voice. He is the author of Publics and Counterpublics (Zone Books, 2002); The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Harvard University Press, 2000); The English Literatures of America, 1500-1800 (Routledge, 1996); Fear of a Queer Planet (University of Minnesota Press, 1993); The Letters of the Republic (Harvard University Press, 1990). He also edited The Portable Walt Whitman (Penguin, 2003) and American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, Jr. (Library of America, 1999).

Warner received his Ph.D. in English from Johns Hopkins University in 1985.

Warner is highly influential in the fields of Early American Literature, social theory, and queer theory 1. His first book, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Harvard University Press), established him as a leading scholar in Early American literature, print culture, and public sphere theory. He later became a public figure in the LGBT community, particularly known for his book The Trouble with Normal (Harvard University Press), in which Warner contended that Queer Theory and the ethics of a queer life serve as critiques of existing social and economic structures, not just as critique of heterosexuality and heterosexual society. Warner coined the term heteronormativity in an article published in the journal Social Text, entitled, "Introduction: Fear of a Queer Planet" (Social Text, 1991; 9 (4 [29]): 3-17.). His latest book, Publics and Counterpublics (Zone Books) is a collection essays on the politics of communication in advanced capitalistic societies, or Habermasian public sphere theory.

Warner is currently working on the history of secularism in early America, from the early eighteenth century to the Civil War, culminating with the work of Walt Whitman, a writer around whom many of his interests converge.

Along with being one of the most respected professors in Early American literature, Warner is, along with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler considered one of the founders of "queer theory."

He lives in New York City; New Haven, Connecticut; and Barton, Vermont.

[edit] References

[edit] Selected Publications

The Portable Walt Whitman, Edited by Michael Warner (New York: Penguin, 2003).
Publics and Counterpublics (Cambridge: Zone Books, 2002).
The Trouble with Normal (New York: The Free Press, 1999; Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000).
American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Library of America, 1999).
The English Literatures of America (Routledge, 1997) with Myra Jehlen.
Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).