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Charles A. (Chuck) Miller (October 19, 1937, Washington, D.C.) is Professor Emeritus of Politics and American Studies, Lake Forest College (IL). He was a highly respected professor, exceptionally popular with both students and faculty colleagues for his mastery of the subjects at hand as well as his ability to teach. He is known for his writings and deep intellectual curiosity on the works of a variety of personages from Lewis Carroll to Homer to Thomas Jefferson and topics from Japanese culture to the US Supreme Court decision-making.

Miller received his B.A. from Swarthmore College (1959) in political science with highest honors and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He studied public law at the University of Freiburg (Germany, 1950-60) under a Fulbright scholarship and was awarded a Masters in Public Administration (1962) and a Ph.D. in government (1968), both from Harvard University.

Miller was Assistant Professor and Woodrow Wilson Teaching Intern at Clark College (GA, 1967-70) (now Clark Atlanta University and Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University (1970-74). His career in the Department of Politics at Lake Forest College (1974-1998), where he became full professor in 1985, included two tenures as department chairman, 1974-79 and 1985-88.

Miller’s interests have been wide and diverse, reflected in the range of undergraduate courses he taught and co-taught over the years, some of which curricula he created. They include constitutional law; civil liberties, Supreme Court Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Louis Brandeis; Aristotle’s Politics, law and literature; Japanese culture; U.S. foreign policy; world politics; The Odyssey and Walden; Nature in American Life, The American South; political economy of health care; American waters; The Jewish experience in America; Framing of the Constitution; The Era of the American Revolution; The 1930’s; and The 1960’s.

Miller’s scholarly passions are likewise reflected in his considerable writings that have included books, essays, reviews, and a vast correspondence. His major contributions to American intellectual thought have been The Supreme Court and the Uses of History (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), and Jefferson and Nature: An Interpretation (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). He is the author of A Catawba Assembly, a 1973 book about Camp Catawba, a summer camp near Blowing Rock, NC that he attended and worked at in 1948-1958 and 1962. The camp and its founder-director, Vera Lachmann (born in Berlin 1904, died in New York 1985), a professor of Greek classics at Brooklyn College, had a profound effect on Miller’s intellectual growth and appreciation of nature and of Greek. One result of his informal studies with Lachmann was to edit a compilation of many of her writings, entitled Homer’s Sun Still Shines: Ancient Greek in Essays, Poems and Translations. A fascination with literary wordplay led to Isn’t that Lewis Carroll?: A Guide to the Mimsy Words and Frabjous Quotations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and The Hunting of the Snark (Trackaday, 1984) and Ship of State: The Nautical Metaphors of Thomas Jefferson, With Numerous Examples by other Writers from Classical Antiquity to the Present (University Press of America, 2003).

His major essays have included “A Guide for Young Savoyards” about the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Ruddigore, or The Witches Curse, The Shenandoah Valley in History and Literature, and Constitutional Law and the Rhetoric of Race. Additionally, Miller’s activities include studies in etymology, toponymy, and remarkable tributes upon the death of a wide range of individuals. Miller was instrumental in honoring an outstanding member of the Lake Forest College faculty through The Christopher C. Mojekwu Memorial Fund for Intercultural Understanding.

Miller resides in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with his wife Barbara Brennan, a nurse practitioner. Piano improvisation and school tutoring are among Miller’s avocations.

Miller’s father Morris (1908-70), was Chief Judge of the Washington, D.C. Juvenile Court (now part of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia), and his mother, Sara Levy (1909-90), a child psychologist, teacher, and artist. Miller assembled The Art of Sara Miller, a privately published book showcasing her considerable output with analysis and commentary. His sister Ann Elizabeth Monahan (1940), a homemaker, lives in Arcola, IL. One brother, John Donald Miller (1942), a retired international development assistance worker lives in the Waterberg region of South Africa, and his other brother, Tom Miller (1947) is an author and free-lance journalist who lives in Tucson, AZ.