J. Hillis Miller bio & publications

UCI Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Department of English & Comparative Literature
jhmiller@uci.edu

Professor Miller has been a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UC Irvine since 1986. He teaches 19th and 20th Century English and American literature, comparative literature of the same period, and literary theory. His range of critical theory interests have included phenomenological criticism, speech act theory, deconstruction, cultural studies, and queer theory. Among numerous honors, Professor Miller recently was named Honorary Professor of Shandong University, and Honorary Professor of Peking University, both in the People’s Republic of China. His most recent books include Others (forthcoming from Princeton UP), Speech Acts in Literature (forthcoming from Stanford UP), and, Black Holes, his part of a double book written in collaboration with Manuel Asensi (Stanford, 1999). Others investigates the notion of otherness in work by various authors including Friedrich Schlegel, Dickens, George Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, Forster, Derrida, de Man, Proust, and Yeats. As exemplified in Speech Acts in Literature, (which includes chapters on Austin, Derrida, de Man, and Proust, among others,) much of Professor Miller's recent research, writing, and lecturing, focuses on the question of whether literary works can have a performative, as opposed to simply constative, force, and on the role of speech acts (promises, lies, contractual commitments, declarations of belief, and the like) in works of literature. Professor Miller's recent work also has included analyses of recent changes in United States research universities as a result of globalization and the new regime of telecommunications (for example, in Black Holes). Professor Miller is currently working on a book on “Speech Acts in Henry James,” as well as on a short book to be called “On Literature.” Many of his broad range of publications are compiled in a Bibliography prepared by Dr. E. Yeghiayan for Professor Miller's 1985 Wellek Library Lectures.

Selected Publications:
Black Holes. Co-author with Manuel Asensi. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999.
Reading Narrative. Norman: Oklahoma UP, 1998.
Topographies. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994.
New Starts: Performative Topographies in Literature and Criticism. Taipei: The Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, 1993.
Illustration. London: Reaktion Books, 1992. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.
Ariadne's Thread. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992.
Hawthorne and History. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Versions of Pygmalion. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990.
Theory Now and Then. Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990.
The Ethics of Reading. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.