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J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Comparative Literature and English at UC Irvine, has been awarded the Ian P. Watt Prize for Excellence in Conrad Scholarship by the Joseph Conrad Society of America.

Given biannually, the Ian P. Watt Prize for Excellence in Conrad Scholarship is named in recognition of Ian P. Watt, a distinguished scholar in Conrad studies.

Miller, a renowned literary critic and theorist, joined UC Irvine from Yale in 1986. He played an integral role in building UC Irvine’s strong foundation in literary criticism and theory alongside famed philosopher Jacques Derrida. Miller’s works on critical theory and literature have earned international acclaim with many of them translated into more than 10 languages. His contributions to literary theory and criticism led one critic to call him “the most significant North American literary critic of the 20th Century.”

For decades, Miller has taken a special interest in the works of Joseph Conrad. “I first read Conrad as a teenager. I found a copy of Typhoon one day by accident among my father’s philosophy and theology books; I opened it just to see what it was like,” said Miller. “I found it enthralling and have been reading, teaching, and writing about Conrad ever since.”

Miller’s critical essay, “Should we read Heart of Darkness?” has been used by scholars and educators since 1998 to dissect and understand Joseph Conrad’s most controversial novella. In his essay, Miller argues that we have an obligation to read the work. “Each must read again in his or her turn and bear witness to that reading in his or her turn. In that aphorism about which Jacques Derrida has had so much to say, Paul Celan says, ‘No one bears witness for the witness.’ This might be altered to say, ‘No one can do your reading for you.’ Each must read for himself or herself and testify anew,” wrote Miller.

Miller will receive the Ian P. Watt Prize for Excellence in Conrad Scholarship virtually next year at either a meeting of the Joseph Conrad Society of America or of the Modern Language Association of America. Though he has been retired since 2002, Miller is still actively authoring works on literary theory and criticism. His latest work, Communities in Fiction (Fordham University Press, 2014), analyses six novels or stories (including Nostromo by Joseph Conrad) in terms of how communities or non-communities are represented.

Critical Theory
English