Nancy K. Miller papers (Ms.2015.002)

Biographical / Historical

Nancy K. Miller was born on February 21, 1941 to parents Louis Kipnis and Mollie (Miller) Kipnis. She was raised in New York City, attended Hunter College High School, and received her B.A from Barnard College in 1961. Leaving New York for Paris, she earned her M.A. from Middlebury Graduate School of French in France in 1962 and her Licence-ès-lettres in English Studies at the University of Paris in 1965. She lived in Paris from 1961 to 1967, years of ex-pat dreams chronicled in her memoir Breathless. Back in New York, Miller then received her Ph.D. in French Literature with distinction from Columbia University in 1974.

From 1974 until 1981, Miller was an assistant professor of French at Columbia College. In 1981, she became the first full-time tenured member of the Women's Studies program at Barnard College; she was Director of the program until 1987. Miller began her appointment at CUNY in 1988 and held the position of Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center from 1999 onward.

During her professional career, Miller has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, as well as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, and the Bogliasco Study Center. She directed three NEH Summer Seminars, and with Carolyn Heilbrun co-founded the Gender and Culture series of books at Columbia University Press. From 2004-2007 she was co-editor of Women's Studies Quarterly.

Miller's research and teaching focus on contemporary memoir, autobiography theory, women's writing, 20th century cultural history (post 1945) and feminist theory. Her publications include: Breathless: An American Girl in Paris (2013), What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past (2011), winner of the Jewish Journal Prize (2012), But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People's Lives (2002), Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community, co-edited with Jason Tougaw (2002), Bequest and Betrayal: Memoirs of a Parent's Death (2000), French Dressing: Women, Men, and Ancient Regime Fiction (1995), Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts (1991), Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing (1988), The Poetics of Gender (1986), and The Heroine's Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722-1782 (1980).

Diagnosed with cancer in December 2011, Miller has been drawing and writing about the experience of living with the illness in an online diary.