Brett Millier
Reginald L. Cook Professor of American Literature

- Office
- Axinn Center 304
- Tel
- (802) 443-5026
- millier@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- Spring 2025: Monday 3:45-5:00, Tuesday 11:00-1:00, Friday 1:00-3:00, and by appointment
Brett C. Millier is the Reginald L. Cook Professor of American Literature in the Department of English and American Literatures. She has been at Middlebury since 1986, and her teaching interests include twentieth century American poetry and fiction, gender studies, Canadian literature, and critical writing and pedagogy. Ms. Millier is a graduate of Yale University (BA) and Stanford University (Ph.D.) She is the author of Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It (U. of California Press) and, Flawed Light: American Women Poets and Alcohol (U. of Illinois Press). Most recent she has co-edited editions of the poetry and prose of the poet Adrienne Rich for W.W. Norton: Poetry and Prose (Spring 2018) and Selected Poems (Fall 2018). Her essays have appeared in Verse, the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, Contemporary Literature, and elsewhere.
Courses Taught
AMST 0500
Current
Upcoming
Independent Study
Course Description
Independent Study
Select project advisor prior to registration.
Terms Taught
AMST 0701
Upcoming
Senior Work I
Course Description
Senior Work
(Approval required)
Terms Taught
CMLT 0700
Upcoming
Senior Thesis
Course Description
Senior Thesis
A senior thesis is normally completed over two semesters. During Fall and Winter terms, or Winter and Spring terms, students will write a 35-page (article length) comparative essay, firmly situated in literary analysis. Students are responsible for identifying and arranging to work with their primary language and secondary language readers, and consulting with the program director before completing the CMLT Thesis Declaration form. (Approval required.)
Terms Taught
CRWR 0560
Current
Upcoming
Special Project: Writing
Course Description
Special Project: Creative Writing
Approval Required.
Terms Taught
CRWR 0701
Current
Upcoming
Senior Thesis:Creative Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Creative Writing
Discussions, workshops, tutorials for those undertaking one-term projects in the writing of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction.
Terms Taught
ENAM 0103
Reading Literature
Course Description
Reading Literature
Please refer to each section for specific course descriptions.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0206
19th Century American Lit.
Course Description
Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Pre-1900 AL)
This course will examine major developments in the literary world of 19th century America. Specific topics to be addressed might include the transition from Romanticism to Regionalism and Realism, the origins and evolution of the novel in the United States, and the tensions arising from the emergence of a commercial marketplace for literature. Attention will also be paid to the rise of women as literary professionals in America and the persistent problematizing of race and slavery. Among others, authors may include J. F. Cooper, Emerson, Melville, Douglass, Chopin, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Hawthorne, Stowe, Alcott, Wharton, and James. . 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0210
American Modernists
Course Description
The American Modernists (AL)
American writers at the turn of the 20th century faced social, intellectual, and technological change on an unprecedented scale. Individually and collectively they worked to answer William Carlos Williams’s pressing question: “How can I be a mirror to this modernity?” In this course we will read, discuss, and write about poetry by writers such as Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens; and prose by Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, and others. (Not open to students who have taken ENAM 0207)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0212
American Literature Since 1945
Course Description
American Literature Since 1945 (AL)
In this course we will trace the development of the postmodern sensibility in American literature since the Second World War. We will read works in four genres: short fiction, novels, non-fiction (the "new journalism"), and poetry. Authors will include Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O'Connor, Jack Kerouac, Vladimir Nabokov, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, and Don DeLillo. 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0254
American Women Poets
Course Description
American Women Poets
We will examine the rich tradition of lyric poetry by women in the U.S. Beginning with the Puritan Anne Bradstreet, one of the New World's earliest published poets, we continue to the 19th century and Emily Dickinson, along with the formidable line of "poetesses" who dominated the popular poetry press in that era. We examine the female contribution to the Modernist aesthetic in figures like Millay, Moore, H.D. and Gertrude Stein; the transformation of modernist ideals by Bishop, Plath, Sexton, and Rich; and, among the postmodernists, Lyn Hejinian and Susan Howe. 3 hrs. lect. (National/Transnational Feminisms)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0500
Special Project: Lit
Course Description
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required.
Terms Taught
ENAM 0700
Senior Thesis:Critical Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking one-term projects in literary criticism or analysis. All critical thesis writers also take the Senior Thesis Workshop (ENAM 700Z) in either Fall or Spring Term.
Terms Taught
ENGL 0103
Reading Literature
Course Description
Reading Literature
Please refer to each section for specific course descriptions.(Formerly ENAM 0103)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0118
Great American Fiction
Course Description
Great Moments in American Fiction
In this course we will look at major moments in the development of a distinctly American tradition in fiction. Focusing on short, intense novels by major authors from the mid-19th to the late 20th centuries, we will see how these writers grapple with and illuminate the central questions of the American experience of democracy, race, gender, and social class. (3 hrs lect./disc.)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0206
19th Century American Lit.
Course Description
Nineteenth-Century American Literature
This course will examine major developments in the literary world of 19th century America. Specific topics to be addressed might include the transition from Romanticism to Regionalism and Realism, the origins and evolution of the novel in the United States, and the tensions arising from the emergence of a commercial marketplace for literature. Attention will also be paid to the rise of women as literary professionals in America and the persistent problematizing of race and slavery. Among others, authors may include J. F. Cooper, Emerson, Melville, Douglass, Chopin, Whitman, Dickinson, Twain, Hawthorne, Stowe, Alcott, Wharton, and James. . 3 hrs. lect./disc.(Formerly ENAM 0206)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0210
American Modernists
Course Description
The American Modernists (AL)
American writers at the turn of the 20th century faced social, intellectual, and technological change on an unprecedented scale. Individually and collectively they worked to answer William Carlos Williams’s pressing question: “How can I be a mirror to this modernity?” In this course we will read, discuss, and write about poetry by writers such as Williams, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens; and prose by Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, and others. (Formerly ENAM 0210)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0212
Current
American Literature Since 1945
Course Description
American Literature Since 1945 (AL)
In this course we will trace the development of the postmodern sensibility in American literature since the Second World War. We will read works in four genres: short fiction, novels, non-fiction (the "new journalism"), and poetry. Authors will include Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O'Connor, Jack Kerouac, Vladimir Nabokov, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, and Don DeLillo. 3 hrs. lect./disc. (Formerly ENAM 0212)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0254
American Women Poets
Course Description
American Women Poets
We will examine the rich tradition of lyric poetry by women in the U.S. Beginning with the Puritan Anne Bradstreet, one of the New World's earliest published poets, we continue to the 19th century and Emily Dickinson, along with the formidable line of "poetesses" who dominated the popular poetry press in that era. We examine the female contribution to the Modernist aesthetic in figures like Millay, Moore, H.D. and Gertrude Stein; the transformation of modernist ideals by Bishop, Plath, Sexton, and Rich; and, among the postmodernists, Lyn Hejinian and Susan Howe. 3 hrs. lect. (Formerly ENAM 0254)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0450
Faulkner and His Influence
Course Description
Faulkner and His Influence (AL)
William Faulkner was extreme: the most radical formal innovator among the American Modernist novelists and an outrageous (and subtle) thinker about the complex social and racial history of the American South. He presides over the literature of the southern United States as a towering, Nobel Prize-winning giant. In this course we will read Faulkner’s major novels and short stories, and then look at where his influence shows up in more contemporary writing by American writers, black and white. 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0467
Current
Dickinson and Bishop
Course Description
Dickinson and Bishop
In this course we will study, in significant depth, the lives and work of poets Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop. These authors are important and widely discussed; thus our topics will include a range of aesthetic, literary-historical, biographical, and political perspectives. And we will make use of a range of archival materials—journal entries, letters, drafts of poems—both published and unpublished. At the heart of our discussions, however, will be the poems these great writers produced. We will learn about ways to read and explicate poems, and about the use of archival materials in literary research and analysis. 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0500
Current
Upcoming
Special Project: Lit
Course Description
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required. (Formerly ENAM 0500)
Terms Taught
ENGL 0700
Current
Upcoming
Senior Thesis:Critical Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking one-term projects in literary criticism or analysis.
Terms Taught
ENVS 0700
Upcoming
Senior Independent Study
Course Description
Senior Independent Study
In this course, seniors complete an independent research or creative project on a topic pertinent to the relationship between humans and the environment. During the term prior to enrolling in ENVS 0700, a student must discuss and agree upon a project topic with a faculty advisor who is appointed in or affiliated with the Environmental Studies Program and submit a brief project proposal to the Director of Environmental Studies for Approval. The expectations and any associated final products will be defined in consultation with the faculty advisor. Students may enroll in ENVS 0700 as a one-term independent study OR up to twice as part of a multi-term project, including as a lead-up to ENVS 0701 (ES Senior Thesis) or ENVS 0703 (ES Senior Integrated Thesis). (Senior standing; Approval only)
Terms Taught
ENVS 0701
Upcoming
Senior Thesis
Course Description
Senior Thesis
This course is the culminating term of a multi-term independent project, resulting in a senior thesis on a topic pertinent to the relationship between humans and the environment. Approval to enroll is contingent on successful completion of at least one term (and up to two) of ENVS 0700 and the approval of the student’s thesis committee. The project, carried out under the supervision of a faculty advisor who is appointed in or affiliated with the Environmental Studies Program, will result in a substantial piece of scholarly work that will be presented to other ENVS faculty and students in a public forum and defended before the thesis committee. (Senior standing; ENVS major; ENVS 0112, ENVS 0211, ENVS 0215, GEOG 0120, and ENVS 0700; Approval only)
Terms Taught
FYSE 1105
The Poet's I
Course Description
The Poet’s ‘I’: Poetry and Autobiography
In this seminar we will work to discover the sometimes subtle connections between the "objective" events of a poets’ lives and the poems that they produced. Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins are known as reticent, self-concealing poets; nonetheless their poems tell their life stories. John Berryman is a "confessional" poet; yet questions about the relationship between his poems and his life are similar. Lyn Hejinian is a postmodern poet who complicates all of those questions. We will read a great many poems, as well as letters, diaries, drafts, published biographies, and autobiographical prose by each poet. 3 hrs. sem./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
FYSE 1479
Poetry and Poetics
Course Description
Poetry and Poetics
This seminar is an introduction to the formal and generic aspects of lyric poetry in English. We will work to develop sensitivity to the various strategies of meaning available to poets—meter, rhyme, sound, diction, imagery—in order to read poems more closely, thoughtfully, and with pleasure. We will also attend to the historical, cultural, and biographical contexts of poems and poets, but our emphasis will be on lyric poems by a variety of poets from a range of periods and traditions. This is a literature, rather than a creative writing, course; but student poets are welcome to join. 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
FYSE 1515
Literature and Moral Choice
Course Description
Literature and Moral Choice
Literature’s subject is almost always morality; that is, how human beings treat one another. We will read and discuss difficult moral and ethical decisions made by characters in fiction and poetry, including works by Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky among others. We will also acquaint ourselves with major theories of moral development and moral reasoning, and through reading, writing, discussion, and preparing oral presentations, we will explore how human beings, including those portrayed by writers who are great students of the human spirit, try to do the right thing in a complex modern and postmodern world.
Terms Taught
Requirements