Joshua I. Miller

Born in Cleveland, I grew up in Chicago and Skokie, Illinois.  My parents are political activists: my father, Jay Miller, was in the labor and peace movements and then became a career official in the American Civil Liberties Union; my mother, Joyce Miller, was a prominent labor union leader, working for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (now UNITE-HERE). She was the first woman to sit on the AFL-CIO executive board, and was a longtime president of the Coalition of Uniion Women (CLUW). I experienced the politics of the sixties close up.

I became serious about my academic education during my third year of high school at Francis W. Parker in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood under the inspiration of teachers Marie Stone in English and Muriel Moulton in Social Studies.

In 1973 at the University of California, Santa Cruz, I entered John H. Schaar’s classes in American Political Thought.  In Schaar I found a mentor and in political theory I found a vocation.  I had another great teacher in Maurice Natanson who taught courses in Existentialism and Phenomenology.  I also took courses with Peter Euben, Marge Frantz, Bro Adams, C.L. Barber, Jon Beecher, Peter Kenez, and Frank Bardacke.

In 1976-78 I worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in Houston, Texas, and in Jonesboro and Little Rock, Arkansas.  Wade Rathke, ACORN’s founder, and Seth Borgos advanced my education in politics.

Beginning in 1978, I studied with Sheldon S. Wolin in Princeton’s political philosophy program.  I also attended the lectures of Wilson Carey McWilliams at Rutgers University.  While finishing my doctoral dissertation I audited theory courses at U.C., Berkeley offered by Hanna Pitkin, Michael Rogin, Norman Jacobson, and Charles Taylor. I received my doctorate from Princeton in 1984.

My teaching career began with visiting positions at Reed College and North Carolina State University before I joined the Lafayette faculty in 1986.  In addition to my regular teaching duties, I held a fellowship at the National Humanities Center, taught a graduate course at Rutgers University, and studied elementary German, French, and Spanish.

Research Interests:  My primary interest is American Political Thought.  I first studied the early period, and then turned to the political thought of the philosopher William James.  Since 1997, I have been examining the Politics of Fashion, especially the intersection of appearance with sex, class, community, political action, and race. In April, 2008, I presented a paper on “Fashion, Tradition, and Democracy,” at George Washington University’s Global Humanities Center’s Third Annual Spring Symposium.