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.

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  And we will make use of a range of archival materials—journal entries, letters, drafts of poems—both published and unpublished.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.

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.

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.

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. .

Reading Literature: Theory & Artistry In this seminar we will cover the basics of literary theory while analyzing a broad selection of literature from the sonnet to slam poetry, and from the modernist novel to the contemporary short story. Our goals are to become competent and confident critics of literary meaning, both in its politics (gender, race, class, sexual) and in its philosophy (hermeneutic, formal, deconstructive). Our objects of study are both literature and ourselves. We will even do some creative writing of our own. Authors may include William Shakespeare, John Donne, Virginia Woolf, Nella Larsen, Octavia Butler, Junot Diaz, Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, and Franny Choi, among others.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. .

Towards a Poetics of Community Why read literature? One answer: such reading is not individual but communal. It links readers to each other in aesthetic experience, in ethical and hermeneutic debate, and in appreciation for writers and fellow readers. As we read literary texts from different times, cultures, and genres, we will examine how they anticipate, create, or recreate readerly communities, and how these communities in turn help shape the texts as they are experienced. We will also strive to form our own readerly community—one that is as inclusive and as intellectually generous as possible. We will begin with close analysis of poetry in various forms from various historical periods. We will then read dramas by such playwrights as William Shakespeare, Margaret Edson, and/or Lolita Chakrabarti, as well as two works from among such prose writers as Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Marilynne Robinson, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan, Walter Moseley, and Jean Rhys.

Brett Millier

Reviews and ratings for Brett Millier at Middlebury College.Brett Millier teaches American Literature Since 1945, Dickinson and Bishop, 19th Century American Lit. and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Brett Millier good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

I took this course because it is required for my major, but I walked away knowing how to write a truly solid close-reading essay. Prof is a harsh grader, but she provides lots of feedback so you know where to improve. The readings were not too tedious, and the majority of the time spent on work was for the papers (usually one due every two weeks).

This course must be in my top 3 favorites of all time. The poetry we read was lovely and contemplative, but this course is by no means easy! Professor Millier is a fair grader on the homework but a difficult grader on the essays, of which there were 2 (mid term and final), and also on a final exam, which was really really difficult. To do well in this class you really have to come prepared and do as much of the reading as you can, of which there is a lot, but if you love poetry, it can come naturally to you. This class was pretty fast paced, as we went through more than a half dozen poets, and for each poet the homework (aside from reading the assigned texts for that day) was to either write a page discussing a poem, or memorizing a poem. If you need help, meeting with Professor Millier during office hours lightens the burden of the course. I'd heavily recommend!

Look - this was a very difficult course. Brett Millier is a very strict grader. BUT. This was the most valuable course I have ever taken. I already know my writing has tripled in quality since. 5 papers, and one exam. Readings were manageable. Professor Millier is flexible with deadlines, and very nice during office hours - she just expects high quality work. If you put in the work, this can be a very valuable course.