Dean A. Miller

Dean A. Miller was born in Chicago on July 29, 1931, the son of Donald Braud Miller and Bessie Garrison.[1] From 1955 to 1958 he served in the Counterintelligence Corps of the United States Army. He received his BA in history from Northwestern University, his MA in history from Columbia University, and his PhD in history from Rutgers University. His dissertion was on Byzantine diplomacy.[2]

After serving as an assistant professor at Saint Peter’s College, Miller was appointed an associate professor at University of Rochester in 1963. Books published by Miller during this time include The Byzantine Tradition (1966) and Imperial Constantinople (1969).[2] Within seven years at Rochester he was appointed a full professor of history there, and also held a secondary appointment in religion and classics. Miller researched a diverse set of subjects, including the Byzantine Empire, Ancient Sparta, Greek mythology and Indo-European studies. He was proficient in a large number of languages, including Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German, and Russian, Old Church Slavonic and Bulgarian. Miller was an adherent of Georges Dumézil's research on Indo-European religion, and published several papers on the relevance of Dumézil's work.

Miller retired from the University of Rochester in 1993, but continued research, write and attend academic conferences. He was a mythology editor for the Journal of Indo-European Studies. His magnum opus, The Epic Hero, was published in 2000. It was the result of 20 years of scholarship, drew on interdiciplinary research spanning the fields of classics, anthropology, psychology, philology, and spanned all the Western epic traditions, including Greek, Roman, Nordic and Celtic, in addition to Indian and Persian. The Epic Hero was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice.[2]

Married three times.[2] He married his first wife, Elizabeth Walter, on January 16, 1955, with whom he had the sons Douglas and Kenneth. He married his second wife, Mona Schekter, on January 24, 1966, with whom he had the sons Scott and Eric.[1] He subsequently married Marta Swift, who died in 2017.[2] Miller was a member of the Democratic Party.[1]

Miller died at his home in Chicago on January 28, 2018. He was survived by his four sons.[2]

• The Byzatine Tradition, 1966
• Imperial Constantinople, 1969
• The Tie That Blinds: The UN/Vatican Connection, 1999
• The Epic Hero, 2000[2]

• C. Scott Littleton
• Hector Munro Chadwick
• Jaan Puhvel
• Calvert Watkins
• Mircea Eliade
• Martin Litchfield West
• Donald J. Ward
• Nicholas Allen