Rate My Professor Elaine Miller

Elaine Miller, Ph.D., serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Science at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from DePaul University in Chicago, an M.A. from Boston College, another M.A. from Bosphorus University in Istanbul, and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Throughout her career, Miller has been actively involved in philosophical scholarship and leadership, including her role as Executive Director of the philoSOPHIA society for Continental Feminism. Her teaching encompasses a range of courses such as Society and the Individual, Philosophy of Art, Existentialism, Nineteenth Century Philosophy, Advanced Aesthetics, and French Feminism, catering to students at introductory, intermediate, and advanced levels.

Miller's research specializations lie in nineteenth-century German philosophy, particularly the works of late Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche; aesthetics; and French feminist theory, including Beauvoir, Irigaray, and Kristeva. Her work often examines the intersections of these areas, focusing on conceptions of nature and art, intersubjectivity, and the relationship between humans and nature. She maintains an abiding interest in the Frankfurt School's aesthetic theory, especially Benjamin and Adorno, as well as Hannah Arendt's philosophy. Key publications include her monograph Head Cases: Julia Kristeva on Philosophy and Art in Depressed Times (Columbia University Press, 2014), which received the 2015 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize; The Vegetative Soul: From Philosophy of Nature to Subjectivity in the Feminine (State University of New York Press, 2002); and the co-edited volume Returning to Irigaray (SUNY Press, 2006). Other notable works encompass articles such as "Hegel on Reflection and Reflective Judgment" (Hegel Bulletin, forthcoming), "Julia Kristeva on the Severed Head and other Maternal Capital Visions" (Library of Living Philosophers, forthcoming), and book chapters like “The Nineteenth Century” in the Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy (2017). Miller has received several honors, including a Summer Research Appointment from Miami University in 2018, the Altman Fellowship in 2015-16, selection as a member of the College of Fellows at the University of Western Sydney (2017-19), and participation in Emory University’s Institute for the History of Philosophy workshops on Fichte and German Romanticism (2018) and Kant's Political Philosophy (2016).