Dr John Miller

School of English

Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature

John Miller
Profile picture of John Miller
john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 0194

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. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miller J (2021) The Philosophy of Tattoos. Philosophies. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miller JW & Miller L (2014) Walrus. Reaktion. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miller J (2012) Empire and the Animal Body: Violence, Identity and Ecology in Victorian Adventure Fiction. Anthem Press. RIS download Bibtex download

Edited books

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

Journal articles

Chapters

  • Miller J (2023) Folk Horror, HS2, and the Disenchanted Woods, The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror (pp. 111-118). Routledge RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miller J (2022) UTOPIAN FICTION, EDINBURGH COMPANION TO VEGAN LITERARY STUDIES (pp. 278-286). RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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). RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • McCorry S & Miller J (2019) Introduction: Meat Critique, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (pp. 1-17). Springer International Publishing RIS download Bibtex download
  • McKay RR & Miller J (2017) Introduction In McKay RR & Miller J (Ed.), Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic (pp. 1-17). University of Wales Press RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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. RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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). RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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). RIS download Bibtex download
  • Miller J (2015) Zooheterotopias, The Globalization of Space: Foucault and Heterotopia (pp. 149-164). RIS download Bibtex download
  • Palladino M & Miller J (2015) THE GLOBALIZATION OF SPACE: FOUCAULT AND HETEROTOPIA INTRODUCTION, GLOBALIZATION OF SPACE: FOUCAULT AND HETEROTOPIA (pp. 1-+). RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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. RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download
  • 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 RIS download Bibtex download

Book reviews

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.