Renata K. Miller
Interim Dean, Division of Humanities and the Arts
Building
North Academic Center
Office
5/225
Phone
212-650-8836
Website
Renata K. Miller
Profile
Before becoming deputy dean of Humanities and the Arts in 2017, I served as chair of the English Department and in various administrative and faculty governance roles at City College. I am the author of The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage (Edinburgh University Press, November 2018), of a book on reinterpretations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and of articles on the Victorian novel, theater, and culture. My newest area of research examines novels, the emergence of the two cultures of sciences and humanities in the Victorian period, and theories of interdisciplinarity. I am also engaged in research on the Independent Theatre Society and its avant-garde influence in English fin de siècle culture, and some of my students’ research pertaining to this subject can be found at www.independenttheatresociety.org. While I regularly mentor student work on any area of Victorian literature and culture, at this time I particularly welcome student projects on various topics in the area of English literature and culture of the 1890s, and on science and literature in nineteenth-century England.
Education
A.B., Princeton University
M.A., Ph.D., Indiana University
Publications
Books
The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, November 2018.
Recent Reinterpretations of Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Why and How This Novel Continues to Affect Us. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005.
Articles
“Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Adaptations of Novels: The Paradox of Ephemerality.” Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies. Ed. Thomas Leitch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 53-70. Commissioned contribution.
“Elizabeth Robins.” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga, Pamela K. Gilbert, and Linda K. Hughes. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2015. 1451-3. Peer-reviewed, commissioned contribution.
“Victorian Science Fiction.” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga, Pamela K. Gilbert, and Linda K. Hughes. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2015. 1519-28. Peer-reviewed, commissioned contribution.
“1893: The Independent Theatre and the Cultural Work of Drama Criticism.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. January 2013. Web. Peer-reviewed, commissioned contribution.
T. W. Robertson’s Caste. The Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. Columbia University Press, 2007. 230-1.
Harley Granville-Barker’s Waste. The Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. Columbia University Press, 2007. 1443.
“Child Killers and the Competition between the Late Victorian Theater and the Novel.” MLQ 66.2 (June 2005). 197-226. (One of three finalists for the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Essay Prize for 2005.)
“The Exceptional Woman and Her Audience: Armgart, Performance, and Authorship.” The George Eliot Review (2004). 38-45.
“Imagined Audiences: The Novelist and the Stage.” The Blackwell Companion to the Victorian Novel. Ed. Patrick Brantlinger and W. B. Thesing. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. 207-24. Commissioned contribution.
Commissioned Book Reviews
Katherine Cockin, ed. Ellen Terry, Spheres of Influence. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2011). Victorian Studies 54 (Summer 2012): 746-48.
Review essay. Reid, Julia. Stevenson, Science, and the Fin de Siècle. (New York: Palgrave, 2006). Reed, Thomas L., Jr. The Transforming Draught: Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Victorian Alcohol Debate. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2006). Journal of Victorian Culture 13 (Autumn 2008): 334-39.
Newey, Katherine. Women’s Theatre Writing in Victorian Britain. (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Victorian Studies 49 (Winter 2007): 386-87.
Allen, Emily. Theater Figures: The Production of the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 2003). Victorian Studies 46 (Spring 2004): 542-44.
Publications on Humanities and the Profession
“A Mid-Career Feminist Reflection: In an Era of Increasing Contingency and Devaluing of the Humanities, We Should Take a Moment to Reconsider the Meaning of Activism.” Academe 97 (January-February 2011), 27-29.
“Finishing the Dissertation.” The Chronicle of Higher Education Career Network. In print and on the web. 1 April 2003.
Public Scholarship
“Why I Struck.” [On International Women’s Day: “A Day Without a Woman.”] Academe Blog. 8 March 2017.
Letter to the Editor in response to David Brooks’s “Why Is Clinton Disliked?” New York Times. In print 25 May 2016, and on the Web 24 May 2016.
Op-Ed, “The Katy Perry-Elmo Dust-up is about Sexualization.” USA Today. In print and on the Web 30 September 2010.
Courses Taught
I teach courses on Victorian literature and theater, science (in) fiction of the Victorian period, modern appropriations and uses of the Victorian period, literature of the fin de siècle, women writers, sensation and melodrama, and, occasionally, theater history.
Research Interests
Primary Fields of Research:
The Victorian Novel
Victorian Theater
Victorian Feminism and the Suffragettes
Contemporary Adaptations of Victorian Literature