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Stephen Barker

Degrees:

Ph.D. (English/Comparative Literature, Literary Theory and Criticism), University of Arizona
M.F.A. (equiv.), London School of Contemporary Dance (UK)
M.F.A. (equiv.), Studio ’68 of Theatre Arts, London (UK)
M.F.A. (Fiction Writing), University of Arizona
B.A. Amherst College


Current or recent UCI or UC positions:

  • Director, University of California Education Abroad Program , Lyon and Grenoble, France
  • Faculty Assistant to the Chancellor, UC-Irvine
  • Chair, Department of Studio Art
  • Chair, Department of Drama
  • Acting Dean, School of the Arts
  • Associate Dean, School of the Arts
  • Professor, Claire Trevor School of the Arts
  • Director, UCI School of the Arts Program in Interdisciplinary Studies
  • Adjunct Professor, Critical Theory Emphasis, UCI School of Humanities
  • Adjunct Professor, Program in Visual Culture, UCI School of Humanities


Brief Professional Background:

Acted, directed, danced, choreographed, and taught professionally in New York, London, and throughout Europe (including the Edinburgh, Dublin, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam Festivals and elsewhere) and South/Central America. Taught, acted, and directed at Studio '68 of Theatre Arts, London. Taught, danced, and choreographed at the London Contemporary Dance School, London (UK); danced in and choreographed for the London Contemporary Dance Theatre (the Martha Graham Company of London). Performed throughout Europe with with MovingBeing, an internationally-known multi-media company based in Cardiff, Wales.

Has published widely on philosophy and on literary and aesthetic theory, most frequently on Samuel Beckett, Friedrich Nietzsche, Freud, Blanchot, and Derrida, and on Jarry, Faulkner, Arthur Miller, and others.


Books include:

  • Autoaesthetics: Strategies of the Self After Nietzsche (Humanities Press)
  • Excavations and Their Objects: Freud and the Collecting of Antiquities (SUNY Press),
  • Signs of Change: Premodern-Modern, Postmodern (SUNY Press),
  • Bodytheory (Continuum Press, London)
  • Interrogating Images (forthcoming from Continuum, London)
  • Imagination of Origin (translation: author Gérard Bucher; French to English)
  • Currently writing a multi-media work, Thresholds/Bucephalus.


Has lectured extensively on art theory and history, and on art, literature, and society, throughout North and South America and Europe.

Lives in Irvine and Provence with wife Michelle, a clinical psychologist.