Paradise Lost<\/em>. It was actually Miller\u2019s research on Milton that first paved the way to what would become his world-famous discovery of the King James Bible draft, as it was while researching an essay in graduate school on Milton that Miller first began exploring the archive of papers in Cambridge formerly belonging to the King James translator, Samuel Ward, whose early draft of part of the translation Miller would later come to identify.<\/p>\nMiller credits his achievements to highly supportive mentors, colleagues and family members over the years. \u201cI spent three years researching something that was supposed to be just a little essay on Samuel Ward for a collection of essays on the King James Bible, during which time I overshot the initial deadline for the essay by over year. So it took a lot of support but also patience from a variety of people \u2013 not least of all from the volume\u2019s editor Mordechai Feingold [of CalTech], who had commissioned the essay \u2013 to allow me to persevere with the research, not knowing exactly how it would all turn out or what the real payoff might be. It was thanks to that freedom, as often happens with these things, that very late in the research process I finally happened to turn my attention to the manuscript notebook of Ward\u2019s that turned out to contain an early, seemingly first draft of part of the King James Bible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MacArthur Foundation recognizes both Miller\u2019s King James Bible research as well as his work on Milton, and Miller notes that those two main strands of his research and writing are in various ways interconnected. For instance, a central concern of Miller\u2019s research is the extent to which the writing processes behind texts and the material remnants of those processes that still survive today in archives played a role in shaping the development of some of the 16th- and 17th-century\u2019s most important works, whether those be works by Milton or the King James Bible itself.<\/p>\n
Miller points out, though, that the interconnectedness of his research can seem to fit together more neatly in retrospect than it felt when he was first embarking on it all. As he tries to reveal was also the case for many of the writers from the past whose works he now studies, Miller didn\u2019t always know where he was going when he was starting out on a project, and his work has taken several turns, above all the discovery of Samuel Ward\u2019s King James Bible draft, that Miller himself never would have anticipated. But clearly, Miller\u2019s perseverance and persistence have paid off.<\/p>\n
His advice to students:<\/p>\n
\u201cTry to follow your instincts, try to maintain curiosity, try to surround yourself with people who are supportive and whom you can learn from. Do work you find meaningful; do work you find exciting. Draw inspiration from and associate yourself with other people who you think are also doing exciting work and trust that that will be its own reward. No one sets off doing this kind of work thinking they are going to win an NEH grant or MacArthur grant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller also emphasizes to students that studying the humanities is a good career choice, even on a purely practical level.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudy after study bears out that humanities majors do exceptionally well in terms of sheer salary earned, variety of career possibilities, and overall financial security attained over the course of one\u2019s life. Employers consistently seek to hire humanities majors because of their habits of mind \u2013 they are creative but extremely diligent, very critical thinkers, good writers, they are good at expressing themselves, listening to others, assimilating vast amounts of information and distilling it clearly and forcefully. These are not skills that are irrelevant to industries where people make a lot of money. Obviously, that\u2019s not, in my view, anything close to the main reason for a student to study the humanities. It will enrich your life beyond measure, in ways that can\u2019t be counted in dollars and cents. But it\u2019s simply not the case that the trade-off for students in the humanities is some sort of vow of poverty. Humanities majors do consistently well over the course of their lives on a financial level, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, if you want to end up with a well-paying job, the humanities are actually a great bet for that,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd if you want to have a vibrant, fulfilling, productive life in other ways, then the humanities are a good bet for that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more on Jeffery Alan Miller, past Fellows and other Fellows awarded this year, visit the MacArthur Foundation website at <\/em>http:\/\/www.macfound.org\/fellows<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"English majors take heart! On Wednesday, September 25, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced that Jeffrey Alan Miller, Associate Professor of English at Montclair State University, is among the 2019 MacArthur Fellows, recipients of the prestigious award commonly (but unofficially) known as the \u201cGenius Grant.\u201d The highly selective award is given to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":207632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-57_english-department","category-faculty-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207633,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207631\/revisions\/207633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}