Chair of Religious Studies and Middle East / South Asia Program

Dr. Miller is developing a book project on the ways South Africa’s variegated post-colonial communities have used coffee, stories about coffee and ideas about coffee’s symbolic and ritual associations to stage and help create more just forms of national community. A professor in the Religious Studies department and Middle East / South Asia program, Dr. Miller is trained in linguistic anthropology and has authored two books: The Moral Resonance of Arab Media: Audiocassette Poetry and Culture in Yemen (Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2007; translated into Arabic in 2021) and The Audacious Ascetic: What the Bin Laden Tapes Reveal about Al-Qa`ida (Oxford University Press, 2015). Aside from research, Dr. Miller teaches courses on contemporary Islam, comparative religious fundamentalism, religion/language, and “Holy Medicinal Plants and Fungi” (soon RST77).  His research languages include Arabic, French and Afrikaans (reading proficiency).