Dr John Miller

School of English

Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature

john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 0194

Jessop West

Full contact details

Dr John Miller
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA

Profile: I arrived in Sheffield in 2012 to take up a lectureship in Nineteenth-Century Literature and was appointed Senior Lecturer in 2016. I am President of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK & Ireland); co-director of the Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre and co-editor of Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature.

Research interests: My research focuses on writing about animals, ecology and empire from the nineteenth century to the present, with particular emphasis on the late Victorian period. My first monograph Empire and the Animal Body (Anthem, 2012) explored the representation of exotic animals in Victorian and Edwardian adventure fiction. My second book was the co-authored volume Walrus for the Reaktion Animal series. I am currently near to completing a monograph titled Victorians in Furs: Fiction, Fashion and Activism. I have started work on my next project, A Literary History of In Vitro Meat which examines the origins of cultured flesh in the late nineteenth century and traces its development in imaginative literature through to the present. I am also contributing co-editor of The Dictionary of Neoliberal Terms and have recently edited a collection of stories about tattooing for the British Library.

Publications

Books

Miller J (2022) The Heart of the Forest: Why Woods Matter. British Library Publishing.
Miller J (2021) The Philosophy of Tattoos. Philosophies.
Miller JW & Miller L (2014) Walrus. Reaktion.
Miller J (2012) Empire and the Animal Body: Violence, Identity and Ecology in Victorian Adventure Fiction. Anthem Press.

Edited books

(Ed.) (2021) The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature. Springer International Publishing.
Miller J (Ed.) (2020) Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain..
Miller J (Ed.) (2019) Tales of the Tattooed: An Anthology of Ink. British Library Publishing.
Miller J & McCorry S (Ed.) (2019) Literature and Meat Since 1900. Palgrave.
McKay RR & Miller J (Ed.) (2017) Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Hutchings K & Miller J (Ed.) (2016) Transatlantic Literary Ecologies: Nature and Culture in the Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Atlantic World. Routledge.
Palladino M & Miller J (Ed.) (2015) The Globalization of Space: Foucault and Heterotopia. London: Routledge.
Miller JW, Maley W & Lyons P (Eds.) (2013) Romantic Ireland from Tone to Gonne: Fresh Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Ireland.. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Miller J (Ed.) (2012) New Perspectives on Victorian Animals (a special issue of Journal of Victorian Culture)..

Journal articles

Miller J (2017) The mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins, by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2015, xii + 331 pp., £22.95 (hardback), 978-0-6911-6275-1. Green Letters, 21(2), 220-221.
Miller J (2016) North Kelvin Meadow. Philosophy Activism Nature, 12, 169-178. View this article in WRRO
Miller J (2016) Victorian literature, energy, and the ecological imagination, by Allen MacDuffie, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014, ix + 305 pp., £60 (hardback), ISBN 9781107064379. Green Letters, 20(1), 113-115.
Miller J (2014) Meat, Cannibalism and Humanity in Paul du Chaillu's Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa; or, What Does a Gorilla Hunter Eat for Breakfast?. Gothic Studies, 16(1), 70-84. View this article in WRRO
Miller J (2013) The fanaticism of the apocalypse: save the earth, punish human beings. Green Letters, 17(3), 305-306.
Miller J (2013) Further Victorian Animals. Journal of Victorian Culture, 18(2), 301-305.
Miller J (2013) Illustrating the Fur Trade in Boy’s-Own Adventure Fiction.. Antennae: the journal of nature in visual culture, 48-57.
Miller J (2013) Biodiversity and the Abyssal Limit of the Human. Symplokē(1 & 2), 207-220.
Miller J (2012) “In Vitro Meat: Power, Authenticity and Vegetarianism”.. Journal for Critical Animal Studies(4), 41-63.
Miller J (2012) “Rebellious Tigers, a Patriotic Elephant and an Urdu-Speaking Cockatoo: Animals in ‘Mutiny’ Fiction”.. Journal of Victorian Culture(4), 480-491.
Miller J (2012) Introduction: Victorian Animals. Journal of Victorian Culture, 17(4), 436-441.
Miller J (2012) “Postcolonial Ecocriticism and Victorian Studies”.. Literature Compass, 9(7), 476-488.
Miller J & Palladino M (2011) “Glasgow’s Doulton Fountain and Postcolonial Heterotopia in Zoë Wicomb’s The One That Got Away”.. Safundi: the journal of South African and American studies, 12, 407-423.
Miller J (2008) “Adventures in the Volcano’s Throat: Tropical Landscape and Bodily Horror in R. M. Ballantyne’s Blown to Bits”.. Victorian Review: an interdisciplinary journal of victorian studies(1), 115-130.
Miller J () Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation. Green Letters, 1-3.
Miller J () EcoGothic Gardens in the Long Nineteenth Century: Phantoms, Fantasy and Uncanny Flowers. Green Letters, 1-3.

Chapters

Miller J (2023) Folk Horror, HS2, and the Disenchanted Woods, The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror (pp. 111-118). Routledge
Miller J (2022) UTOPIAN FICTION, EDINBURGH COMPANION TO VEGAN LITERARY STUDIES (pp. 278-286).
Miller J (2022) The Psittacine Witness: Parrot Talk and Animal Ethics in Earl Derr Biggers’ The Chinese Parrot and Earl Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Perjured Parrot, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (pp. 85-104). Springer International Publishing
Hawthorn R & Miller J (2022) Origins and Evolutions: The Brutal History of Detective Fiction, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (pp. 1-24). Springer International Publishing
Miller J (2021) Last Chance to See: Extinction in Literary Animal Studies and the Environmental Humanities, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (pp. 605-620). Springer International Publishing
McHugh S, McKay R & Miller J (2021) Introduction: Towards an Animal-Centred Literary History, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (pp. 1-11). Springer International Publishing
Miller J (2019) Fiction, Fashion, and the Victorian Fur Seal Hunt In Ryan D, Spencer J & Edwards K (Ed.), Reading Literary Animals Medieval to Modern Routledge
Miller J (2019) James Thomson's deserts In Mazzeno LW & Morrison RD (Ed.), Victorian Environmental Nightmares (pp. 101-119). London: Palgrave. View this article in WRRO
Hawthorn R & Miller J (2019) Tattoos, deviance and consumer culture in North American television: Criminal minds, CSI: NY and Law and order, TATTOOS IN CRIME AND DETECTIVE NARRATIVES (pp. 256-270).
Miller J (2019) The Literary Invention of In Vitro Meat: Ontology, Nostalgia and Debt in Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants, Literature and Meat Since 1900 (pp. 91-110). Springer International Publishing
McCorry S & Miller J (2019) Introduction: Meat Critique, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (pp. 1-17). Springer International Publishing
McKay RR & Miller J (2017) Introduction In McKay RR & Miller J (Ed.), Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic (pp. 1-17). University of Wales Press
Miller J (2017) Saki, Nietzsche and the Superwolf In McKay RR & Miller J (Ed.), Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic University of Wales Press View this article in WRRO
Miller J (2017) Creatures on the “Night-Side of Nature”: James Thomson’s Melancholy Ethics In Mazzeno L & Morrison R (Ed.), Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture: Contexts for Criticism (pp. 189-212). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Miller J (2017) Bare Life and Bear Love Masculinity, Capital, and Arctic Animals in the Nineteenth-Century North, CRITICAL NORTHS: SPACE, NATURE, THEORY (pp. 119-135).
Miller J & Palladino M (2017) Glasgow' Empire Exhibition and the Interspatial Imagination in 'There's the Bird that Never Flew' In Easton K & Attridge D (Ed.), Zoe Wicomb and the Translocal Writing Scotland and South Africa (pp. 148-165). Routledge
Miller J (2016) The Environmental Politics and Aesthetics of Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines: Capital, Mourning and Desire In Mazzeno LW & Morrison RD (Ed.), Victorian Writers and the Environment: Ecocritical Perspectives Routledge
Miller J (2016) The Sublime and the Dying: Landscape Aesthetics and Animal Suffering in the Boy’s–Own Fur Trade In Hutchings K & Miller JW (Ed.), Transatlantic Literary Ecologies: Nature and Culture in the Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Atlantic World Ashgate
Hutchings K & Miller J (2016) Introduction: Nineteenth-century transatlantic literary ecologies, Transatlantic Literary Ecologies: Nature and Culture in the Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Atlantic World (pp. 1-21).
Miller J (2015) Zooheterotopias, The Globalization of Space: Foucault and Heterotopia (pp. 149-164).
Palladino M & Miller J (2015) THE GLOBALIZATION OF SPACE: FOUCAULT AND HETEROTOPIA INTRODUCTION, GLOBALIZATION OF SPACE: FOUCAULT AND HETEROTOPIA (pp. 1-+).
Miller J (2013) “R. M. Ballantyne and Mr G. O’Rilla: Apes, Irishmen and the1861 Great Gorilla Controversy”. In Miller JW, Lyons P & Maley W (Ed.), Romantic Ireland From Tone to Gonne: Fresh Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Ireland. (pp. 402-415). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Miller J (2013) “The ‘Queer Corners of the Soul’: John Buchan and Psychoanalysis" In Macdonald K (Ed.), John Buchan and the Idea of Modernity. (pp. 125-140). Pickering and Chatto
Miller J (2012) “Representation, Race and the Zoological Real in the 1861 Great Gorilla Controversy” In Sullivan J, Plunkett J & Kember J (Ed.), Popular Exhibitions, Science and Showmanship 1840-1910 (pp. 153-166). Pickering and Chatto
Miller J (2009) “The Anarchist’s Garden: Politics and Ecology in John Buchan’s Wastelands", Reassessing John Buchan: Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps (pp. 193-206). Pickering and Chatto
Miller J (2009) “Animal Magic: Conjury and Power in Colonial Taxidermy” In Colligon F, Millim A & Georganta K (Ed.), The Apothecary’s Chest: Magic, Art and Medication. (pp. 13-22). Cambridge Scholars' Press
Miller J (2007) “The Pornography of Science: Violence, Taxonomy and Desire in the Imperial Hunting Narratives”. In Moffat R & de Klerk E (Ed.), Material Worlds Cambridge Scholars' Press

Book reviews

Miller (2020) The Evolving Forms of Victorian Animal Studies. Victorian Studies, 62(2), 306-306.
Miller J (2020) The Tattoo Project: Commemorative Tattoos, Visual Culture and the Digital Archive. Fashion Theory, 24(3), 455-460.
Miller J (2019) Fueling Culture: 101 Words for Energy and Environment. Green Letters, 23(4), 436-438.
Miller J (2018) Anthropology and cryptozoology: exploring encounters with mysterious creatures. Green Letters, 22(4), 442-444.
Miller J (2018) Literature and animal studies. Green Letters, 22(2), 220-222.
Miller J (2017) Ecocriticism and geocriticism: overlapping territories in environmental and spatial literary studies, edited by Robert T. Tally Jr and Christine M. Battista. Green Letters, 21(1), 106-108.
Miller J (2016) Wild Animal Skins in Victorian Britain: Zoos, Collections, Portraits, and Maps / The Dog in the Dickensian Imagination. Journal of Victorian Culture, 21(1), 132-136.
Miller J (2016) At Home and Astray: The Domestic Dog in Victorian Britain. Social History, 41(1), 120-120.
Miller J (2015) London Zoo and the Victorians, 1828–1859. Cultural and Social History, 12(3), 432-434.
Miller J (2014) Beastly Journeys: Travel and Transformation at the Fin de Siecle. LITERATURE & HISTORY-THIRD SERIES, 23(2), 100-102.
Miller J (2013) The Tiger that Swallowed the Boy: Exotic Animals in Victorian England. JOURNAL OF VICTORIAN CULTURE, 18(2), 301-305.
Miller J (2013) Reading the Animal in the Literature of the British Raj. JOURNAL OF VICTORIAN CULTURE, 18(2), 301-305.
Miller J () ‘What it meant to be human in the nineteenth century’: The Ambiguities and Vulnerabilities of Victorian Skin. Journal of Victorian Culture.

Research group: I would be very happy to supervise projects relating to any aspect of my research, particularly animals and/or ecology in Victorian literature and culture, adventure fiction, the Arctic, and the literary representation of tattoos and tattooing.

Teaching activities

I teach mainly in modules on the nineteenth century and in relation to animal studies and ecocriticism. Courses closely related to my research interests include:

LIT115: Darwin, Marx, Freud
LIT271: Radical Theory
LIT275: Literature, Ecology, Capital
LIT6045: Humans, Animals, Monsters and Machines from Gulliver’s Travels to King Kong
LIT637 Victorian Bodies

Public engagement: I have a strong interest in the links between environmental aesthetics, conceptions of environmental and species value and public policy. I organised open sessions on these and related topics at the conferences Modern Environments: Contemporary Readings in Green Studies at the University of Glasgow in 2007 and Activism, Apocalypse, and the Avant-Garde at the University of Edinburgh in 2008. In 2015, as part of Sheffield’s Festival of Arts and Humanities, I ran a day of events under the title Caring for Sheffield’s Woodlands.