Dr David Miller
Senior Lecturer
My profile
Biography
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 interests centre eon the relationship among memory, trauma and poetic language. 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, articles on Adorno and ‘Holocaust’ poetry, trauma and poetry, articles on Keats and the older poetic literatures of death and dying are forthcoming.
I have taught at universities and colleges in Rome, Berlin and Paris and this wider cultural experience informs my approaches to both undergraduate 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 quality boxing journalism and writing by writers such as A.J. Leibling, Norman Mailer, Pearce Egan and Joyce Carol Oats and so on.
Words of wisdom
Like a dull scholar, I behold in love,
An ancient aspect touching a new mind.
It comes, it blooms, it bears its fruit and dies.
This trivial trope reveals a way of truth.
Wallace Stevens
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
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
Expert reviewer for external funding bodies
Regular reviewer for the European Romantic Review
Consultant for Berghahn Books, New York
Consultant on trauma and literature for Routledge
Projects
I am currently writing a monograph on the poetics of anguish and loss in John Keats.
Teaching
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.
Research outputs
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/ .
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Books (authored/edited/special issues)
Miller, D. (2007) With Poetry and Philosophy Four Dialogic Studies : Wordsworth, Browning, Hopkins and Hardy. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
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Chapters in books
Miller, D. (2014) 'Impossible histories: Adorno and the question of lyric.' The Future of Testimony: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Witnessing. pp. 208-215.
Miller, D. (2014) 'After Epic: Adorno’s Scream and the Shadows of Lyric.' The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature. pp. 65-80.
Miller, D. (2014) '“Dante and Marx: Allegory and Reading in Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope”.' 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,
Miller, D. (2014) '‘Poetry after Auschwitz: Reconsiderations’ (an invited contribution) in.' Companion to Holocaust Literature, edited by Jenni Adams.. Continuum Books,
Miller, D. (2012) '“Auerbach's Purgatory: Poetic Language, Ethics and the Prepon”.' Rethinking Mimesis. Concepts and Practices of Literary Representation. Cambridge Scholars Press,
Miller, D. (2004) '“Adorno and Lukacs: Some Co-ordinates for the Scottish Literary Tradition".' Beyond Scotland: New Contexts for Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature. Rodopi,
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Journal articles
Miller, D. (2012) '‘In some shut convent place’: The Question of Stevenson’s Children’s Poetry’.' ‘Journal of Stevenson Studies, 8pp. 214-234.
Miller, D. (2012) '“Allegory, Melancholy and Memory”.' Memory Studies, (Spring 2012) pp. 1-17.
Miller, D. (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)
Miller, D. (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, 10pp. 27-39.