Laura Miller is an American anthropologist and the Ei'ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of History at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. She held various academic positions and jobs in both the United States and Japan before accepting this named chair in 2010.
Miller’s research interests are in the fields of interdisciplinary Japan studies and linguistic anthropology. She has done research on diverse topics, including divination, the kawaii aesthetic, conduct literature, youth fashion and the beauty industry, and historic figures such as Himiko and Abe no Seimei. Her linguistic anthropology research has included studies of Japanese youth slang, writing systems, gendered linguistic performances, folklinguistic theories, loanwords, and interethnic communication. Miller also produced some research on Russian language acquisition.
Selected publications
Books
'. Edited by Laura Miller and Rebecca Copeland. University of California Press, 2018. '. Edited by Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller, and Christine Yano. Stanford University Press, 2013. '. Edited by Jan Bardsley and Laura Miller. University of California Press, 2011. '. University of California Press, 2006. . Edited by Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Selected book chapters and journal articles
"Purikura: Expressive energy in female self photography." In Introducing Japanese Popular Culture, edited by Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade. Routledge, 2017. Transnational Asia: an online interdisciplinary journal 1 2017. "Japanese tarot cards." ASIA Network Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Art 24, 2017. "Japan’s trendy Word Grand Prix and Kanji of the Year: Commodified language forms in multiple contexts." In Language and Materiality: Ethnographic and Theoretical Explorations, edited by Jillian Cavanaugh and Shalini Shankar. Cambridge University Press, 2017. "." Japanese Language and Literature 49, 2015. "Rebranding Himiko, the Shaman Queen of Ancient History." Mechademia, An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and the Fan Arts. University of Minnesota Press, 2014. "Cute masquerade and the pimping of Japan." International Journal of Japanese Sociology 20, 2011. "." Language & Communication 31, 2011. ASIA Network Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts 18, 2010. "Extreme Makeover for a Heian-Era Wizard." Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and the Fan Arts. University of Minnesota Press, 2008. "Those naughty teenage girls: Japanese Kogals, slang, and media assessments." Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14, 2004. "You are doing burikko! Censoring/scrutinizing artificers of cute femininity in Japanese." In Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People, edited by Shigeko Okamoto and Janet Shibamoto Smith. Oxford University Press, 2004. "." In The Life of Language: Papers in Linguistics in Honor of William Bright, edited by Jane Hill, P.J. Mistry and Lyle Campbell. Mouton/De Gruyter, 1997. "". In Second Language Acquisition in a Study Abroad Context, edited by Barbara F. Freed, John Benjamins, 1995. "Two aspects of Japanese and American co-worker interaction: Giving instruction and creating rapport." Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences 31, 1995. "Japanese and American indirectness." Journal of Asian and Pacific Communication 5, 1994. "" Pragmatics 4, 1994. "." In The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication, edited by Jan Blommaert and Jef Verschueren, John Benjamins, 1991. "The Japanese language and honorific speech: Is there a nihongo without keigo?" Penn Review of Linguistics 13, 1989.
