Mica Hilson earned his MA in English and a BA in Mathematics from Emory University at age 18, then went on to earn his PhD in English from Indiana University. He joined AUA in 2016 and has chaired the English & Communications program since 2020. Winner of the 2019 Excellence in Teaching award, he has taught such classes as Intro to Communications, American Literature, English Literature, Discourse Analysis, Short Fiction, Critical Theory, Research Methods, Capstone, and a special topics class on Representations of Disability. He has published extensively on modern and contemporary literature, drama, film, television, and online culture. His research has covered many different themes, but recurring topics in his work have included sexuality and gender studies, kinship, biopolitics, ecocriticism, and consumer culture.
Education
- 2010, PhD in English, Indiana University
- 1998, MA in English, Emory University
- 1998, BA in Mathematics, Emory University
Research Interests
- Sexuality studies
- Masculinity studies
- Queer kinship
- Biopolitics and ecocriticism
- Consumer culture
- Media industries (especially book publishing and film production)
- 20th century fiction
- 20th century drama
Selected Publications
Edited Chapters
Hilson, M. (2026). "I don't like that phrase 'sexual relationship'": Sex, Obscenity, and Respectability in The Front Runner. In N. Endres (Ed.), Patricia Nell Warren and The Front Runner: Fifty Years Later. Peter Lang.
Hilson, M. (2024). How to Stop Pruning Your Queer Family Tree. In A. Sathi and Ferrebe, A. (Eds.), Queer Kinship and Comparative Literature: New Approaches. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hilson, M. (2023). Queer Anxieties and Perverse Desires in the Alien Infiltration Film. In D. Perry and Cutchins, D. (Eds.), The Eternal Future of the 1950s: Essays on the Lasting Influence of the Decade’s Science Fiction Films. McFarland Press.
Hilson, M. (2022). Toxic Masculinity in Gay Erotic Fiction. In L. Cooper (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture. Routledge.
Hilson, M. (2021). Networks, Desire and Risk Management in Gay Contagion Fiction. In S. Becker, Bruin-Mole, M., and Polak, S. (Eds.), Embodying Contagion: The Viropolitics of Horror and Desire in Contemporary Discourse. University of Chicago Press.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Hilson, M. (2025). “Please heed the pauses and silences in this play": Analyzing Nonverbal Communication in the Works of Annie Baker and Harold Pinter. Harold Pinter Review 9, 32-46.
Hilson, M. (2021). “The kind of person who would mess with a kid’: Cultural Fantasies of Stranger-Danger and AM Homes’ "Looking for Johnny". The Comparatist 45.
Hilson, M. (2020). “The Damned Don’t Cry": Melancholia and White British Masculinity in 1980s Synthpop Music.” de genere: Journal of Literary, Postcolonial, and Gender Studies 6.
Hilson, M. (2018). Reimagining the Family Tree: Property, Biopolitics, and Queer Kinship in David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon and Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot. Pacific Coast Philology 53(2).
Hilson, M. (2018). “Rubbish of All Kinds": Domesticity, Squalor, and Squatting in Doris Lessing’s Fiction. Doris Lessing Studies 36(1).