Dr Eric Miller of World Storytelling Institute
On Day 2 (March 6) at Akāra 2012 between 11 am and 2 pm is a storytelling workshop by Dr Eric Miller of the World Storytelling Institute. The following is his life narrative.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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. From ’08 to ’11 he was a part-time professor of story and storytelling at the Image College of Art, Animation, and Technology, which is based in Chennai. In ’07, in Chennai, he co-founded the World Storytelling Institute.
Dr. Miller enjoys the combination of teaching college students, leading storytelling workshops (for parents, teachers, businesspeople, etc), and working in the new media industry. He enjoys facilitating and participating in storytelling-related videoconferenced 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 Center for Counselling) have married, and are raising their daughter.
Akāra 