Perry Gilbert Eddy Miller (February 25, 1905 – December 9, 1963) was an American intellectual historian and a co-founder of the field of American Studies. Miller specialized in the history of early America, and took an active role in a revisionist view of the colonial Puritan theocracy that was cultivated at Harvard University beginning in the 1920s. Heavy drinking led to his premature death at the age of 58. "Perry Miller was a great historian of Puritanism but the dark conflicts of the Puritan mind eroded his own mental stability."
Early life
Miller was born in Chicago in 1905 to Eben Perry Sturges Miller, a physician from Mansfield, Ohio, and Sarah Gertrude Miller (née Eddy) from Bellows Falls, Vermont. His father appeared in the deacon's candidacy lists for Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in 1895 and 1898, but he also received a "notice of discipline" for "abandonment or forfeiture of the Holy Orders" and "deposition" from the ministry in 1898, seven years before the birth of his son. The late 19th-century Episcopal Church of Illinois issued notices of discipline for cases of "moral delinquency," "doctrinal errors," and "sickness and infirmity."
Travels, the Congo, and American Studies
Inspired by hearing about the adventures of World War I veterans in Europe, between 1922 and 1926, Miller traveled widely, by his own account working in California lettuce fields, acting on Broadway [Greenwich Village], writing for magazines, and working aboard a freighter ship in the Congo. In 1974, Elizabeth Miller, Perry Miller's widow, informed Stanford Searl, Jr., a Quaker disciple of her late husband's writings, that, " 'as for the Congo episode...yes, there is a kind of truth in Perry’s romantic reference in Errand. But Perry, who was a writer, was in part creating, after the fact, an effective anecdote as well as an explanation of why his own errand had been undertaken.' " Five years later, in his introduction to a collection of Perry Miller's essays, Searl publicly responded to Elizabeth Miller, pointing out that "what is of significance is not how it came about---whether it was indeed vouchsafed or not." In fact, according to Searl, Walter J. Ong had confirmed that her late husband frequently claimed such epiphanies because " 'it was the kind of thing he liked to remember.' " Searl then ascribed significance not to the veracity of the narrative itself, but to Perry Miller's intention of binding "the roles of actor and adventurer to the world of ideas." Historians have since critiqued Miller in the Congo as "revealing U.S. investments in empire"; as "checking off every box in the colonial rulebook"; as writing a preface that "foregrounds the ways in which imperialism has been simultaneously formative and disavowed in the foundational discourse of American studies"; and, intentionally or unintentionally, certain or uncertain, as setting "out to describe an empire in the ascendant; moreover, an empire which would govern the conditions in which he worked and which might well expect a particular self-image to be upheld by its chroniclers...this has led some to reinforce the erroneous belief that Miller was a 'safe' historian, persuaded of the righteousness of America and the justice of its actions."
American Studies specialist Paul Lauter has written and lectured on formulating pedagogical approaches to Perry Miller's "epiphany" in the Congo. According to Lauter, his students "...were suspicious of [Amy] Kaplan's revelations of the implications of Miller's starting point for American Studies...'Isn't she really saying he's a racist?' one student memorably protested. I tried to deflect attention from Miller's psychology and toward the implications of the narrative for the early shape of American Studies...the discussion led us to apply Jameson's rubric---'always historicize'...examining Miller in this way enabled us to understand how what we designated as 'American Studies' was not fixed by history into a particular profile but like other phenomenon was historically rooted in the starting points particular scholars in particular circumstances at particular times might recognize as different."
Education
Miller earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago, where he was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.