Dr. Aaron Hunter

Biography

I joined Trinity in 2021, after having taught at Maynooth University, Queen's University Belfast and Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. From 2016-18, I held an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellowship on the topic of Women in New Hollywood.

At Trinity I teach a variety of modules from first-year lectures to upper-level electives and MPhil seminars. Modules I've designed include Film Authorship, TV History and Theory, and Punk Cinema. I also teach all levels of screenwriting and supervise BA screenwriting capstone project and MPhil screenwriting dissertations. Beginning in September of 2026, I am the director of the MPhil in Screen Studies and a member of the School of Creative Arts Athena SWAN committee.

My primary area of research is the New Hollywood era, and I am particularly interested in alternative approaches to film authorship - focusing on the creative labour of non-directing crew such as screenwriters, production designers, cinematographers and performers. My first book, Authoring Hal Ashby: The Myth of the New Hollywood Auteur, re-imagines New Hollywood filmmaking as a much more collaborative and multiply-authored era than generally considered. My second monograph, Polly Platt: Production Design and Creative Authorship argues for Platt's centrality in authoring the films she designed and often co-wrote. I have also published the screenplay case study Being There and the Evolution of a Screenplay: 3 Draft Scripts and, co-edited with Martha Shearer, Women and New Hollywood: Gender, Creative Labour, and 1970s American Cinema. I have also published a number of articles and book chapters on topics related to New Hollywood, film authorship, and women in film and TV.

Outside of Trinity, I regularly give talks at other universities and at cinemas in Dublin. I was a member of the Dublin Feminist Film Festival board from 2017-2022 and of the Irish Screen Studies board from 2016-2023, where I co-organised with Jennifer O'Meara the organisation's 20th Annual Seminar.