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Faculty Directory

Daniel Miller

Daniel Miller headshot

Professor of Humanities

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PHONE: 802-387-7227

Administration 212

Biography

None of the vital, pressing social, economic, political, or environmental challenges confronting us today can be met without the critical insights, methods, and conceptual resources of the humanities and liberal arts. Employers also value the skills and capacities of students graduating with degrees in these areas. Recognizing this, my teaching is informed by the conviction that undergraduate education requires more than access to information—it requires that we transform the ways we know and act in the world and in relation to one another. This conviction is at the core of my teaching and informs all the courses I teach at Landmark College, which explore some of the most vexing and intriguing issues confronting today’s students, providing a forum for honest inquiry and critical explanation. My aim is to equip all my students, of all backgrounds, abilities, and identities, with the resources they need to understand and actively engage the world as the capable, dynamic, versatile citizens we so desperately need.

Education

Ph.D., Syracuse University

M.Phil., Syracuse University

M.St., (Research), University of Oxford

M.Div., Golden Gate Seminary& (now Gateway Seminary)

B.A., Oklahoma Baptist University

Publications

Queer Democracy: Desire, Dysphoria, and the Body Politic. Routledge Press, 2021 (forthcoming).

The Myth of Normative Secularism: Religion and Politics in the Democratic Homeworld. Dusquesne University Press, 2016.

Recent Journal Articles and Book Chapters

A Modest Reply to Timothy Fitzgerald. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (2020): 1 – 11. DOI: 10.1163/15700682-12341500.

Review of Miguel A. De La Torre, Burying White Privilege: Resurrecting a Badass Christianity. Reading Religion: A Publication of the American Academy of Religion (Nov. 20, 2019). http://readingreligion.org/books/burying-white-privilege.

The Populist Fantasy: American Ethno-Nationalism and the Dysphoria of the Body Politic. Soundings, vol. 102, nos. 2 – 13 (2019): 226 – 252.

White Evangelicals, American Ethno-Nationalism, and Prospects for Change. In Doing Theology in the Age of Trump, ed. Jeffrey W. Robbins and Clayton Crockett. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018.

The Mystery of Evangelical Trump Support? Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12351. Published online March 24, 2018.

“Pay to Caesar the Things of Caesar”: Contesting Judeo-Christian Secularism and Neo-Colonial Legitimation. The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp.53 – 68. Online publication Dec. 29, 2016.

Theocracy, Eschatology, and the Ephemeral Church: Graham Ward and the “Crisis of Democracy.” Political Theology. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/1743171914Y.0000000001. Published online 2 June, 2015.

The Politics of Religious Repetition, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (2014): 1 – 21.

A Theo-Politics of the (Im)proper: Jacques Derrida vis-a-vis Graham Ward. Political Theology 12.1 (February 2011): 87 – 117.

Additional Publications and Public Scholarship

Straight White American Jesus (in collaboration with Bradley Onishi, Ph.D.). Original podcast series, 2018 – present.

Election 2020 and the Fantasy of a White Christian America. 2020.

Landmark College Speaker Series (October 2020).

Donald Trump and the Theopolitics of Ineffable Power. Political Theology Today online forum, July 28, 2016. http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/donald-trump-and-the-theopolitics-of-ineffable-power/.

“Politicized Religion” Doesn’t Explain Evangelical Support of Donald Trump. Religion Dispatches, March 31, 2016. http://religiondispatches.org/politicized-religion-doesnt-explain-evangelical-support-of-donald-trump/.

Presentations

Secularization and the Queer Social Body. 2020 American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting.

Pure Christian America: "Purity" as a Concept for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Christian Nationalism in the US. Roundtable for the 2020 North American Association for the Study of Religion annual meeting. Roundtable organizer and participant.

Response to Michael J. McVicar, “Paper Terrorism: Religion, Paperwork, and the Contestation of State Power in the ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Movement.” 2018 North American Association for the Study of Religion annual meeting, Denver, CO.

Fear of the Democratic Goat-Stag: Populism, Social Dysphoria, and the Fantasy of the Integral Body Politic. Invited paper. “The New Populism and the Politics of Dissensus: A Symposium.” Indiana University at Kokomo, March 29 – 31, 2018.

White Evangelicals, American Ethno-Nationalism, and Prospects for Change. 2017 Westar Institute “God and the Human Future” Seminar. Boston, MA, Nov. 18, 2017.

Heteronomy, Theonomy, and Finitude: Active Nihilism and Religious Radicalism. 2016 American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX.

The Emerging Demos and Shifting Boundaries: Why a Radically Democratic Social Imaginary Cannot be Normatively Secular. Sixth International Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society, “Religion in the Age of Anthropocene: Towards a Common Cause?” The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, March 22 – 23, 2016.

“Render Unto Caesar What is Caesar’s”: Authority and Tribute in the Colonial and Postcolonial Imaginary. The Le Moyne College Religion and Literature Forum, “Sacred Literature, Secular Religion: A Conference on Cultural Practice,” Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY, October 1 – 3, 2015.

Academic Interests

World religions; Religion, Culture, and American Politics; Radical Democratic Political Theory; Gender and Embodiment; 20th Century Continental Philosophy; Theory and Method in the Study of Religion; Secularism

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