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Eric
Edwin Miller was born in midtown Manhattan, New York City, where he was
raised by his parents, Edwin Miller (Entertainment Editor of Seventeen
Magazine,'46-'88) and Lydia Joel (Editor-in-Chief of Dance Magazine,'56-'70;
Chair of the Dance Department of NYC's High School of the Performing Arts,
'72-'84). Dr.
Miller attended Trinity School (grades 2-8), and Stuyvesant High School, both
in NYC. He pursued his undergraduate degree at Swarthmore College,
Oberlin College, and New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized
Study, receiving his B.A. degree in '84. From
'82 to '06, Dr. Miller and a partner (Diana Dunbar) co-directed Eric &
Co. Video, which was based in NYC. In its early years, this company
documented performances and social and corporate functions; later it produced
largescreen videoconferences and other multimedia events. Dr.
Miller has also worked for other new media companies, including Amusitronix,
which provided virtual reality and other interactive entertainment. Dr.
Miller's primary function as a media professional (consultant, designer,
director-producer) is to bring the spirit of physically-present storytelling
into new media environments. Dr.
Miller developed his interest in storytelling in the following manner:
Throughout high school and college, Dr. Miller was involved with theatre as a
writer, director, and performer. As an undergraduate, he was introduced
to the study of Folklore by Dr. Phyllis Gorfain of the Department of English,
Oberlin College. Back
in NYC, in his early twenties, Dr. Miller met Laura Simms -- a storyteller,
educator, and leader of the modern revival of storytelling -- and he began
studying with and working for her, eventually doing two Independent Studies
with her, both as an undergraduate and a graduate student at NYU. Dr.
Miller's work for Ms. Simms has included managing mailing lists; preparing
publicity and advertisements; giving feedback regarding manuscripts and
performances; videotaping performances; and acting as liaison for the
"1995 Month of International Storytelling in New York," which
involved assisting storytellers from England, France, Iran, Africa, and the
USA. Throughout
much of the '80s and '90s, Dr. Miller was based in New York City's East
Village. Here he worked as a video documenter of performances; and as a
performance and video-installation artist, eventually using videoconferencing
in these events also (an article about this art work is here). In
'88, Dr. Miller entered the Gallatin School M.A. program to further his
studies of oral narrative and interactive telecommunication. The
Gallatin School enables one to study in various parts of NYU, and Dr. Miller
did much of his M.A. coursework in the Interactive Telecommunication Program
(Tisch School of the Arts). He
conducted M.A. fieldwork in Tamil Nadu, south India, from July '88 to July
'89; and then again, from Jan. '91 to Nov. '91. He collected data
regarding: traditional storytelling techniques, attending folk and orthodox
storytelling performances and videotaping some of them; and the Silappathikaram
(Epic of the Anklet), a central epic of the Tamil people. He
walked 250 miles in the footsteps of Kannagi, the heroine of the epic, and
visited a tribe said to have been founded by Kannagi some 1600 years
ago. In 1991, while in Madras (now Chennai), Mr. Miller self-published
a booklet entitled, "Tamil Nadu's Silappathikaram
(Epic of the Anklet): Ancient Story and Modern Identity."
Dr. Miller's M.A.
thesis surveyed visual accompaniments used by storytellers, and argued
for the inclusion of electronic imagery on a large screenin that
family. Dr. Miller received his M.A. degree in 1996. From
'96 to '02, Dr. Miller taught a total of eleven courses as an adjunct
professor at St. John's University (Staten Island, NYC campus) and Fordham
University (Lincoln Center, NYC campus). These courses included Expository
Writing, Writing About Literature, The Modern Short Story, American Drama,
The Folktale, and Introduction to Speech Communication. In
Spring '02, he taught a course entitled, Storytelling, at NYU's School
of Continuing and Professional Studies. In
'99, he began work on a Ph.D. in Folklore at the University of
Pennsylvania. His Ph.D. dissertation, "Ethnographic
Videoconferencing,
as Applied to South Indian
Children's Songs/Chants/Dances/Games, and Language Learning," posits
that children's verbal play may assist their language learning process, and
discusses how play and language learning can occur in
videoconferencing. The
primary research for this project involved being based in a mountain village
with Kani tribal people in southwestern Tamil Nadu (from March '03 to Dec.
'04). Fruits of this project include a set of traditional-play-based
question-and-answer routines that can be used to teach and learn any
language, especially in vieoconferences. Dr. Miller's Ph.D. was awarded
in '10. Dr.
Miller studies storytelling (oral narrative) as it occurs in everyday
conversation, as well as in various more formal contexts.
Sociolinguistic and sociokinetic processes -- as they occur both face-to-face
and as mediated by interactive telecommunication technology -- constitute the
basic subject matter of his scholarship. He
is helping to establish Storytelling Studies as an interdisciplinary
field in academia. In '07, in Chennai, he co-founded the World Storytelling Institute. From
'08 to '11 he was a Professor of Story and Storytelling at the Image College
of Art, Animation, and Technology. In
'12, he taught courses in The Modern
Short Story, and Creative Writing,
at the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras. In '15, he taught public speaking, and
research and writing skills, to MA students in the Dept of Journalism and
Communication, University of Madras.
All of these institutions of higher learning are in Chennai. In
'15, Dr. Miller began a M.Sc. course of study in Psychology at the University
of Madras. He is doing this in order
to better theorise, and eventually to practice, "Storytelling
Therapy", which is one of the Creative Arts Therapies, alongside Drama
Therapy, Poetry Therapy, etc. Dr.
Miller enjoys the combination of teaching college students, leading
storytelling workshops (for parents, teachers, business-people,
counsellors/therapists, etc). He enjoys facilitating and participating
in storytelling-related videoconferences involving training and performances
around the world, and is developing simultaneous translation systems for such
use. Dr.
Miller serves as a technical director of civic, artistic, business, educational,
and other types of videoconferences. His career is dedicated to
democracy and peace, and to alleviating suffering, through the use of the
most ancient and modern of communication technologies. Dr.
Miller has settled in Chennai, where he and Magdalene Jeyarathnam (a Chennai
native, and founder-director of the East West Center for Counselling
and Training, and the Indian Institute of
Psychodrama) have married, and are raising their daughter. Dr.
Miller can be contacted through his personal website, www.storytellingandvideoconferencing.com
; and www.storytellinginstitute.org
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