About

David H. Miles, born 1940 in Orono, Maine, took a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Maine under Professor Howard Eves, received a Mathematics Fulbright to Freiburg in 1962, took another Fulbright for a year at the University of Mainz, and then a Ph.D. in German from Princeton University in 1968. In 1970 he returned to the University of Freiburg to work under Prof. Gerhard Kaiser for a year on a Humboldt fellowship, from which emerged the article, “The Orbits of the Stars and the Cycles of the Seasons: Hölderlin’s Mystic Journeys, T. S. Eliot, and In My Beginning is My End.” He also published “A Thought Experiment: Three Marxists in Search of Paradise,” and “SIodmak: The Wolf Man and the Letters from Ex-Nazis, A Moral for Today.”

After publishing a book with Princeton Press on Hofmannsthal’s Novel ‘Andreas’: Memory and Self (re-published in 2015 in the new series ‘Princeton Essays in Literature’), he received a Guggenheim, from which emerged “Portrait of the Marxist as a Young Hegelian: Georg Lukács’ Theory of the Novel,” which won a best-of-year prize from the journal PMLA, and was re-published by Cambridge University Press in 2020 on their new digital platform.* After spending a year at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Study, he chaired the German Department from 1978-1980. He also published “The Picaro’s Journey to the Confessional: The Changing Image of the Hero in the German Bildungsroman” in PMLA, which subsequently was translated into German and selected as the only American article included in an anthology published in Germany for German universities: Zur Geschichte des deutschen Bildungsromans (Darmstadt, 1988) and was re-published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.*

Throughout these years Miles found his interests changing—and universities changing as well—and he finally left teaching in 1984 for a full-time consulting career as a corporate curriculum designer and subsequently as an online learning expert. During these “wilderness years” he worked with AT&T Bell Labs, Bank of America, IBM, and Docent Software of Silicon Valley, the year it went public in 2000. He also wrote white papers on new technology and strategic learning for companies from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. From these years emerged his 30-Second Encyclopedia of Learning and Performance: A Trainer’s Guide to Theory, Terminology, and Practice (From Aristotle to Comenius to Computers), co-authored with his wife Lori Miles.**

Taking early retirement in 2008, he returned to his real love—reading and writing as a private scholar—and focusing on close reading and the history of ideas in literature. Seasoned by his years of exposure to the hard-headed world of business, he found that his view of literature and ideas had expanded considerably. It now included a more intense awareness of the concrete workings of the economic-political sphere, which is so much a part of our daily lives that most of us are unaware of its power and reach.

Miles has lived three years in Germany, one-half year in France, and one month in Cairo—just before the Arab Spring of 2011 (where he is proud to have learned the Arabic alphabet!). From this visit emerged a modest anthology, The Unknown Quran: Best Sayings from the Quran for Everyday Use, and an article, “A Springtime Psalm from the Quran: The Quran, The World of Nature, and Modern Science” (both forthcoming on QuranCafé.com). The last piece he dedicated to Abdus Salam, the first Muslim Nobel Prize winner in Physics. Miles now lives near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and enjoys, with his wife, swing dancing and walks in the countryside.

Notes

* Cambridge University’s Digital Publishing Platform [re-published the two PMLA articles]
Lukas
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/portrait-of-the-marxist-as-a-young-hegelian-lukacs-theory-of-the-novel/6A423774A9A1CEB0213B1B493B2CECEF
Picaro
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/picaros-journey-to-the-confessional-the-changing-image-of-the-hero-in-the-german-bildungsroman/9B6CED8AC453E9AE337C1212397F1389

** The 30-Second Encyclopedia of Learning and Performance
https://www.amazon.com/30-Second-Encyclopedia-Learning-Performance-Terminology/dp/0814471781

**Lori Miles is author of: Does God Evolve? Bible Stories You’ve Never Heard Before, winner of a Writers Digest Awards commendation in 2022:
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Evolve-Stories-Before-ebook/dp/B00ICSLTDE
Website: https://godevolves.wordpress.com/