Daniel Miller

• Position: Professor
• Department: History and Philosophy
• Office Location: Building 86, Room 112
• dmiller@uwf.edu
• Campus: 850.474.2067
• Central European Observer

Biography

Dr. Daniel E. Miller, professor of history, teaches courses in modern Europe, Europe between the world wars, Central Europe, East-Central Europe, Balkans, Russia, the Soviet Union, Germany, the Habsburg Monarchy, the European Union, and agricultural history.

Raised in a Slovak household, Miller was immersed in Slovak and Czech history and culture.  He was fascinated with how the Czechoslovak First Republic (1918-1938) was democratic and then, after the Second World War, became communist.  Over the years, his work has explored Czechoslovak democracy between the world wars as a consociational democracy and interwar Czechoslovak agrarian politics, including how land reform supports democracy.

Miller has published numerous articles and chapters, both in Czech and in English, on Slovak and Czech agricultural politics and democracy in the Czechoslovak First Republic.  He is currently collaborating with two other scholars on a book about consociationalism (a model of democratic power sharing) in the Habsburg Monarchy and the Czechoslovak First Republic.  He is working on a monograph detailing the creation of new agricultural settlements on land obtained from the great estates, during the Czechoslovak land reform between the World Wars.  He also is editing a volume of memoirs of American historians who researched in communist-controlled Czechoslovakia between 1968 and 1989.

In 1999, Miller wrote, Forging Political Compromise: Antonín Švehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party (1918-1933), a book that focuses on agrarian politics and democracy in Czechoslovakia between the two World Wars.  Czech historians voted the Czech translation of this book on Antonín Švehla the best historical work of 2001 (tied with one other) by a foreign author.  He coedited a book on agricultural politics (in Czech) and wrote a short monograph on Czech public opinion about the European Union between 2003 and 2013.  Miller also published 15 articles, in Czech and English, and one coauthored article.

Miller, who has been in the UWF history department since 1990, was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University from 1989 to 1990.  He has made numerous research trips to East-Central Europe, particularly the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and he has traveled throughout Europe.

Degrees & Institutions

Miller received his bachelor’s degree in East European studies and political science from the University of Pittsburgh, a master’s degree in history from University of Illinois at Champaign­ Urbana and a doctorate degree in history from the University of Pittsburgh.

Research

Miller has two forthcoming works: Governing Divided Societies: Habsburg Austria’s Democratic Legacy and the Czechoslovak First Republic (coauthored), which Central European University Press will publish; and “Continuity and Discontinuity in Legislative Representation: From Austria-Hungary to the Austrian and Czechoslovak First Republics,” which will appear in the last volume of Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918, a multivolume work by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has written both of these studies with Thomas A. Lorman (School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London) and Philip J. Howe (Adrian College in Adrian, MI). Miller also is editing a volume containing the memoirs of American historians who researched in Czechoslovakia during the communist era.

Special Interests

Czech and Slovak history especially between 1918 and 1938 dealing with democracy, agricultural politics, and land reform. Miller also enjoys music (piano), photography (digital and 35mm), home repair, auto maintenance, cooking, traveling, and a variety of other distractions. Miller also enjoys music (piano), photography (digital and 35mm), home repair, auto maintenance, cooking, traveling and a variety of other distractions.

Publications

The Influence of Václav Klaus on Czech Public Opinion Regarding the European Union.  Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 2503.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, Center for Russian and East European Studies, University Center for International Studies, 2017.  URL:http://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/issue/view/186.

“The Creation of the Conditions for Consociational Democracy and Its Development in Interwar Czechoslovakia.”  With Philip J. Howe (Adrian College in Adrian, MI) and Thomas A. Lorman (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London).  Bohemia: Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur der bömischen Länder / A Journal of History and Civilisation in East Central Europe 56/2 (2016): 362-380.  The article and abstracts are available, at no charge, at https://www.bohemia-online.de/index.php/bohemia/article/view/8023.

K úloze a významu agrárního hnutí v českých a československých dějinách [The Significance and Meaning of the Agrarian Movement in Czech and Czechoslovak History].  Eds. Jiří Šouša (Charles University, Prague), Daniel E. Miller, and Mary Hrabik Samal (Oakland University, Rochester, MI).  Prague: Karolinum–Nakladatelství Univerzity Karlovy, 2001.

Antonín Švehla–mistr politických kompromisů [Antonín Švehla–Master of Political Compromise].  Trans. Stanislav Pavlíček.  Edice Ecce Homo.  Prague: Argo, 2001.

Forging Political Compromise: Antonín Švehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party, 1918-1933.  Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.

Awards and Honors

Agricultural History – Vernon Carstensen Award in 2000 for the best article in 1999 for “Collectivization in the 1970s and 1980s in Zamagurie, Slovakia”

Dějiny a současnost [History and the Present] – Best historical work by a foreign author (tied with one other) for Antonín Švehla-mistr politických kompromisů, 2002

Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace – Visiting Scholar, 1989-1990

International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) - Research grant to examine the Czechoslovak land reform between the world wars using sources in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, 1999-2000

Open Society Archives (Budapest, Hungary) – Archival research grant to study agricultural collectivization in Slovakia, 1997

UWF Outstanding Teaching and Advising Award, 1993-1994, 1998-1999, and 2003-2004

UWF Research grants, 1991, 1993, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2014, and 2016

UWF Teaching Incentive Program Awards, 1993-1994, 1996-1997, and 2003-2004

University of Wyoming at Laramie, American Heritage Center, research travel grant, 2010

Woodrow Wilson Center, East European Program (Washington, DC) – Short Term Research Grant, Summer 1998

Affiliations

American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies

Czechoslovak Studies Association

Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences

Slovak Studies Association

Keywords: Antonín Švehla, agrarian politics, agrarian reform, agricultural colonization, Balkans, Central Europe, consociationalism, Czech Republic, Czechoslovak First Republic, Czechoslovak Republican Party, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, East-Central Europe, Eastern Europe, European agricultural history, European Union, Habsburg Monarchy, land reform, Modern Europe, power sharing, Russia, Slovakia, Soviet Union