Assistant Professor
Phone: (901) 678-5740
Email: jdmiles1@memphis.edu
Office: Patterson 429
Concentration Affiliation: Literary and Cultural Studies

Education

B.A., 1998,Trinity University
M.A., 2002, The University of Arizona
Ph.D., 2009, Duke University

Academic Summary

Dr. Miles specializes in colonial and nineteenth-century American literature. He is particularly interested in how narratives of and about early America produce community allegiance and identity, be those affiliations in the pre-national space of colonial New England, or in the formative years of the United States’ historical awareness during the nineteenth century.   Dr. Miles teaches surveys of early American literature at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as the introduction to literary research for graduate students. He has also taught a senior-level class in the genesis and evolution of the early American novel, as well as a graduate survey on the problem and production of history in early American literature.

Select Publications

• “Melville’s America: The United States in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” In Critical Insights on Herman Melville. Eric Link, ed. Salem/EBSCO. (Forthcoming 2012.)
• “Those We Don’t Speak Of: Indians in The Village.” PMLA 123:2 (March 2008). Co-authors Lauren Coats, Matt Cohen, Kinohi Nishikawa, and Rebecca Walsh.
• Review of Lucy Maddox, Citizen Indians: Native American Intellectuals, Race & Reform and W. C. Harris, E Pluribus Unum: Nineteenth-Century American Literature & the Constitutional Paradox. American Literature, 80:4 (Dec. 2008).
• Review of Wil Verhoeven, ed., Revolutionary Histories: Transatlantic Cultural Nationalism; Susan Manning, Fragments of Union: Making Connections in Scottish & American Writing; Colin Wells, The Devil & Doctor Dwight: Satire & Theology in the Early Republic. American Literature 75:3 (Sept. 2003). Co-author Matt Cohen.