Dr. Kristine Miller

Biography

A professor of English at USU, Dr. Miller began directing the University Honors Program in July 2014. She is a graduate of the Honors Program at the University of Michigan, where she also earned her M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1995) in English. She has recently published a book entitled Building Honors Contracts: Insights and Oversights, and her disciplinary research and teaching focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century British and American literature.

She is particularly interested in war and has written a book, British Literature of the Blitz: Fighting the People’s War (2009), that examines fiction and films about the bombed London home front during World War II. Her recent research concerns post-9/11 literature and culture. She has published articles on the trauma of NYPD cops in Jess Walter’s novel The Zero and RAF fighter pilots in A. L. Kennedy’s novel Day. She has also edited a collection of essays entitled Transatlantic Literature and Culture After 9/11: The Wrong Side of Paradise (2014) and published essays on The 9/11 Report and 9/11 memorials and museums. When students ask about the impact of focusing so closely on violence and trauma, she explains that war fascinates her not because of its destructive power but because of the creative potential it reveals in the mind’s response.

This ability to think, create, and innovate—even in the worst of times—defines us as human beings. Dr. Miller hopes that the University Honors Program will guide students in following the wise advice of Horace: "Sapere Aude" or "Dare to Know."