Nancy K. Miller^[1] (born 21 February 1941) is an American literary scholar, feminist theorist andmemoirist. Currently a Distinguished Professor ofEnglish andComparative Literature at theCUNY Graduate Center, Miller is the author of several books onfeminist criticism, women’s writing, and most recently, family memoir,biography, andtrauma.^[2]

She received her B.A. from Barnard College (1961), her M.A. fromMiddlebury College, and her Ph.D. in French at Columbia University.^[3]

In 1981, Miller became the first full-time tenured member of theWomen’s Studies program atBarnard College and was appointed its director, a post she held until her appointment at CUNY in 1988.^[4] Prior to that, she taught in theFrench department atColumbia University.^[3]

Miller founded the Gender and Culture Series atColumbia University Press in 1983 along with feminist scholarCarolyn Heilbrun, and continues to co-edit the series.^[5] Between 2004 and 2007, she and geographerCindi Katz co-edited the journalWomen’s Studies Quarterly, which received the Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals under their leadership.^[6]

Miller has been a visiting professor atHarvard University,Hebrew University, andTel Aviv University, and aPhi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. She is the winner of numerous fellowships and awards, including theRockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship, theJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and theNEH Senior Fellowship.^[3]

Miller's early contributions to literary theory include that of the “invisible intertext” added by women to a more conventional form of writing, as by blending a quest plot with the romantic plot normatively prescribed to early female authors.^[7] She was further notable for her opposition toRoland Barthes's influential theory ofThe Death of the Author, pointing out how this tended to occlude gender subjectivities in a text through emphasising what she called the web, as opposed to the role of the weaver:^[8] the theory serving thereby as a postmodern mask forphallocentrism.^[9] Her position gave rise to a famous debate within feminism on the issue withPeggy Kamuf.^[10]

Miller also played an influential role in pioneering the unification of personal accounts with theoretical explorations inside the same text, thus making concretesecond wave feminism's linking of the personal and public realms.^[11]

• My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism (2019)ISBN 978-0-231-19054-1
• Breathless: An American Girl in Paris (2013)ISBN 978-1-580-05488-1
• What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past (2011)ISBN 978-0-8032-3001-9
• But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives (2002)ISBN 978-0-231-12523-9
• Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community, co-edited with Jason Tougaw (2002)ISBN 978-0-252-07054-9
• Bequest and Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent's Death (2000)ISBN 978-0-253-21379-2
• French Dressing: Women, Men, and Fiction in the Ancien Regime (1995)ISBN 978-0-415-90321-9
• Contre-courants: les femmes s'écrivent à travers les siècles, withMary Ann Caws, Elizabeth Houlding, and Cheryl Morgan (1994)ISBN 978-0-13-042920-9
• Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts (1991)ISBN 978-0-415-90324-0
• Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing (1988)ISBN 978-0-231-06661-7
• The Poetics of Gender (1986)ISBN 978-0-231-06311-1
• The Heroine's Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722-1782 (1980)ISBN 978-0-231-04910-8

• Official website
• Nancy K. Miller onTwitter
• "What They Saved" website
• Interview with Nancy K. Miller - The Minnesota Review
• Interview with Nancy K. Miller - Women Writers
• The Age Difference - The Scholar & Feminist Online
• Nancy K. Miller Papers - Pembroke Center Archives, Brown University

• 1941 births
• Living people
• 20th-century American Jews
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers
• 20th-century American women writers
• 21st-century American Jews
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• 21st-century American women writers
• American women literary critics
• American women non-fiction writers
• American women philosophers
• Barnard College alumni
• Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
• Columbia University faculty
• CUNY Graduate Center faculty
• Feminist studies scholars
• Feminist theorists
• Jewish American non-fiction writers
• Jewish feminists
• Jewish philosophers
• Jewish women writers

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