Carol Miller

Associate Professor, American Studies
mille004@umn.edu

Carol Miller, Morse Alumni Distinguished Professor of Teaching in American Studies and American Indian Studies, has a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma (1980) and is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She has recently completed terms as interim chair of the Department of American Studies and as Director of Graduate Studies of the Master of Liberal Studies Program. Her research focuses on contemporary American Indian literatures, particularly contemporary fiction by American Indian women writers. Recent published articles or chapters have concerned the representation of the “Indian urban” in Native fiction; how treatments of World War II by Native writers address the myth of assimilation; and issues of mediation in the writing of Mourning Dove and Ella Deloria. She is currently at work on a book-length study tentatively titled Shifting Shapes: The Efficacious Literary Tradition of American Indian Women’s Fiction. She is also the co-founder of Voices from the Gaps, a web site of biographical, bibliographical, and critical information about North American women writers of color. Now beginning the first year of a phased retirement, she will be away from campus during the 2004-05 academic year.

Education:

Ph.D., American Literature, University of Oklahoma, 1980
M.A., American Literature, University of Oklahoma
B.A., English and Education, Northeastern State University

Scholarly Works:

"Shifting Shapes: Convergence and Authority in Fiction by American Indian Women"

This book-length study examines how converging themes and narrative strategies in the work of writers like Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrick, Anna Lee Walters, Ella Deloria, Ignatia Broker, and others link that body of writing to the traditional functionality of ancestral storytelling.

Professional Activities:

Chair, Department of American Studies, 2003-04

Director of Graduate Studies, Department of American Studies, 1997-98

Principal investigator for Voice from the Gaps, an electronic data base of information about minority women writers.

Awards:

Morse Alumni Distinguished Professor of Teaching, University of Minnesota

Recent Courses:

AmIn 3201W American Indian Literature
AmSt 8259 Literature, History, and Culture: Research Strategies

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