Dr David Miller

Who am I?

Dr David Miller is senior lecturer in the Department of English Literature, at Manchester Metropolitan University and the general editor of the Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies. His publications include a monograph on poetry and philosophy and articles and anthology contributions dealing with tragedy, trauma, melancholy and poetry. His most recent publications are a study of the poetic undercurrents in the work of Ernst Bloch for Duke University Press and articles on tragedy, poetry and trauma.

I have taught at universities and colleges in Rome, Berlin and Paris and this wider cultural experience informs my approaches to both undergradaute and graduate teaching.

I have an ongoing interest in Italian and Russian twentieth century history and culture.

I maintain an interest in the sport of boxing, its history and also in high quality boxing journalism and writing by writers such as A.J. Leibling, Norman Mailer, Pearce Egan and Joyce Carol Oats and so on.

Why do I teach?

The literary and poetic 'world' is an opening; to study and engage with this 'world', is to glimpse an opening onto the Open.

Words of wisdom

 A joy was there, and then allowed to die,

till it became at last this thing — although

at what great price? Not less than life, a sigh.

And yet so lovely — made — as if to show

it is no more too soon to smile; to fly.

Rilke

Academic and professional qualifications

1995-2000 PhD, Bakhtin Centre, Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, British Academy funded.
1991-1994 B.A. Hons, English Literature, (1:1) First Class, Dept. of English Literature, University of Sheffield

Previous employment

From 2000 to 2010 I taught and lectured at various universities and collleges in Rome, Bologna and Paris.

2011- 2012 Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh

2009-2011 Lecturer in Nineteenth Century Literature, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling

Other academic service (administration and management)

I have served on various committees and administrative bodies at all university levels since 2008.

Languages

English, Russian and Italian

Research expertise

My research centres on the literature and poetry of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century and the interplay of poetry, philosophy and cultural commentary during this period. I retain a strong interest and sphere of work in tragedy and theories of tragedy, from Aristotle and Sophocles to Hegel, Nietzsche and Beckett.

My work on lyric poetry and melancholy and theories of tragedy and loss, has moved towards research and publication in trauma and the relationship of memory, trauma and poetic language. This work is unusual in that it seeks to locate certain configurations of trauma prior to the twentieth century and in fact sees later catastrophes as an intensification and extension of earlier repressive and cataclysmic models and practices.

A second book manuscript, Being Lost: Keats and the Poetics of Trauma, is currently in preparation.

I am the general editor of the Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies. Information in repect to submissions and copies of the Journal can be accessed here http://www.jlts.stir.ac.uk/ .

Academic collaborations

I collaborate with the English Department at the University of Macau, China and with Konan Institute, University of Konan, Kobe, Japan.

Publications

• Books (authored/edited/special issues)

  D. Miller (2007). With Poetry and Philosophy Four Dialogic Studies : Wordsworth, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

• Journal articles

  D. Miller (2012). ‘In some shut convent place’: The Question of Stevenson’s Children’s Poetry’. ‘Journal of Stevenson Studies. 8, pp.214-234.

  D. Miller (2012). “Allegory, Melancholy and Memory”. Memory Studies. pp.1-17.

  D. Miller (2010). The Arbitrary and the Absolute: Versions of Poetic Meaning in Wordsworth and Milton. Imaginaires. 12(Order and Chaos EPURE-Editions et Presses Universitaires de Reims),

  D. Miller (2003). “The Prosaic Sublime: Wordsworth’s Essays upon Epitaphs and Kant’s Critiques”, in Anna Maria Sportelli (ed.), Aesthetics, Philosophy and Politics,. Journal of Romantic Studies. 10, pp.27-39.

• Chapters in books

  D. Miller (2014). After Epic: Adorno’s Scream and the Shadows of Lyric. In: The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature. pp.65-80.

  D. Miller (2014). The Future of Testimony. A. Rowland, J. Kilby. In: The Future of Testimony: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Witnessing. Routledge, pp.208-215.

  D. Miller (2014). “Dante and Marx: Allegory and Reading in Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope”. In: The Privatisation of Hope: Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope,’ for the SIC series 2013, edited by Slavoj Zizek and Peter Thomson.. Duke University Press,

  D. Miller (2014). ‘Poetry after Auschwitz: Reconsiderations’ (an invited contribution) in. In: Companion to Holocaust Literature, edited by Jenni Adams.. Continuum Books,

  D. Miller (2012). “Auerbach's Purgatory: Poetic Language, Ethics and the Prepon”. In: Rethinking Mimesis. Concepts and Practices of Literary Representation. Cambridge Scholars Press,

  D. Miller (2004). “Adorno and Lukacs: Some Co-ordinates for the Scottish Literary Tradition". In: Beyond Scotland: New Contexts for Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature. Rodopi,

Invited papers

June 2018, NASSR Conference, Brown University, 'Keats and the Art of Literary Death'.

May 2015, The Centenary Keats Conference, Guy's Hospital, London, 'Keats and the Poetics of Absolute Dismemberment'.

Aug, 2012, Plenary Speaker, Literature and Suffering, International Seminar, University of Macau, China,

Aug, 2011
‘Lyric and the Voice of Catastrophe’, ‘Future of Memory Studies’, Department of English, University of Salford.

Feb, 2011 Invitation,
‘The Future of Memory Studies’ and ‘English Literature and the Death of God’, invited
lecture, Centre for Literature and Trauma, University of Ghent.

Aug, 2010 Poetry,
Allegory, and Prepon: A Poetics of Real Possibility', Mimesis and Ethics Conference, University of Helsinki
(invited).

Invited roundtable discussions

Nov, 2011, 'Poetry and Theories of Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century', Department of English Studies,
University of Durham.

Feb, 2011, 'Allegory, Memory and Lyric', Dept. English, University of Ghent

Feb, 2016, 'Keats and the Beauty of Dead Lanaguage', Konan Institute, Konan University, Kobe, Osaka, Japan.

Conference organisation

I have served as organiser, fund raiser and chair of sessions for two international conferences in Rome
and I am was principal organiser of the 5th International Poetry and Melancholia conference at Stirling.

Expert reviewer for journals and publishers

“Unwritten Laws” a Review of
Ambrosini and Drury's European Stevenson Scottish Literary Review, 2013.

“Cities of Metaphor” a review essay of The Edinburgh Companion to
Robert Louis Stevenson, Penny Fielding (Ed), is in currently in press and forthcoming with the Scottish Literary Review,
2013

I am a regular reviewer for the European Romantic Review

Consultant for Berghahn Books, New York

Consultant on trauma and literature for Routledge

Grants

Daiwa Foundation Grant, 2017.