Paul B. Miller

Paul B. Miller, Ph.D. Emory University, 1999
Assistant Professor

 

 

 

 

 

After more than a decade as a Spanish professor, I was delighted to join the Department of French and Italian at Vanderbilt in the Fall of 2010.  My PhD (Emory, 1999) was in Comparative Literature and I am committed to comparative approaches to the literatures, languages, music and cultures of the Francophone, Hispanic and Anglophone Caribbean. My book, Elusive Origins: The Enlightenment in the Modern Caribbean Historical Imagination, was published in May, 2010 by the University of Virginia Press.  In it, I discuss the legacy and re-evaluation of the impact of the Enlightenment in the Caribbean as reflected in six modern Caribbean authors from across linguistic and national boundaries.

Recently I introduced into the curriculum at Vanderbilt a course on Latin American and Caribbean Jewish writers that I have taught in Spanish and English.  I am currently working on a second book project on this topic, tentatively titled “The Dialectics of Tradition and Assimilation in Latin American and Caribbean Jewish Writing.”

In addition to my teaching and scholarship I have enjoyed leading study abroad groups to Madrid as the Director of the Vanderbilt in Spain program in 2005-2006, to Cuba in a Vanderbilt “Maymester” and on several trips to Cuernavaca, México. In 2010 I am serving as Professeur-en-Résidence at Vanderbilt-in-France at Aix-en-Provence.

In my spare time I enjoy playing basketball with students and faculty at Vanderbilt’s Rec Center and playing jazz, classical, flamenco and rock and roll guitar.

Representative Publications

Books

Elusive Origins: The Enlightenment in the Modern Caribbean Imagination.  Charlottesville, Virginia: The University of Virginia Press, New World Studies Series, 2010.

 

 

 

 

“The Dialectics of Assimilation and Tradition in Latin American and Caribbean Jewish Writing.” In Process.

Articles

“Remoteness and Proximity: The Parallel Ethnographies of Alejo Carpentier and René Maran” in Symposium, Vol. 66, No. 1, 1–15, 2012.

“Bendito sea A. que no me hizo indio ni negro: ethnic paradigms in Menasseh Ben Israel’s Esperanza de Israel.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies.  Forthcoming, 2010.
“Literature and Popular Culture.” In Understanding the Contemporary Caribbean, 2nd Edition.  Eds., Richard S. Hillman and Thomas J. D’Agostino.  Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, and Kingston: Ian Randle: 2009.  339-366.   With Kevin Meehan (Revised for second edition).

“Marti, Schomburg y la cuestión racial en las Américas.” Afro-Hispanic Review.  25:2 (Fall 2006) 73-88.  With Kevin Meehan.

“Reading Caribbean Music: the Compositions of Leo Brouwer.” Literature, Music and Cultural Unity in the Caribbean. Ed. Timothy Reiss, Trenton, NJ and Asmara: Africa World Press, January, 2005.

“The Prison House of Allegory: Reflections on the Cultural Production of the Cuban ‘Special Period.’”  Inti, Revista de Literatura Hispánica.  59-60: Spring-Fall, 2004. 195-206.

“No saber estar: el pecado original de Calvert Casey.” Universitas Humanistica 54 (2002): 93-99.

“Enlightened Hesitations: Tragic Heroes and Black Masses in C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins.”  MLN 116 (2001): 1069-1090.

“Blancas y Negras: Carpentier and the Temporalities of Mutual Exclusion.”  Latin American Literary Review 58 (2001): 23-45.

“Transiciones ideológicas en las películas de Gutiérrez Alea.” Cifra Nueva: Revista de Cultura 9 (1999).
“Los límites de la modernidad caribeña.” Cambalache: balance de un siglo de cambio cultural en las Américas. La Habana: Universidad de La Habana (forthcoming).

“Memories of Underdevelopment. Thirty Years Later: An Interview with Sergio Corrieri.”  Cineaste XXV/1 (1999): 20-23.

“Memorias del Subdesarrollo, treinta años después: Una entrevista con Sergio Corrieri.” Cifra Nueva 8 (1998): 189-201.

“Francisco Goya,” “Isaac Albéniz,” “Andrés Segovia,” and “Fernando Sor.” Dictionary of Hispanic Biography,  Detroit: Gale Press, 1995.

Notable Latin American Women, various entries, Detroit: Gale Press, 1993.

Reviews

“Alan Wells: Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa“, Ameriquests: Vol. 7 No. 1 (2010),

“Patrick Chamoiseau: Seven Dreams of Elmira.” Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora Vol.7 No.1 (Winter/Spring 2004), 169‑174.

“Daniel Chavarría: The Eye of Cybil”, Greekworks.com, online journal. February 17, 2003.

“Rodolfo Privitera: Desde otro lugar.” Inti: Revista de Literatura Hispánica 48, 1998. 179-82.

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