Mara Miller (Ph.D., Yale University; M.A., University of Michigan; B.A. Cornell, University) teaches pre-modern Japanese literature at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is a former Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at Hawaii Tokai International College.
Author of The Garden as an Art (State University of New York Press), she is finishing Terrible Knowledge (philosophical reflections on teaching and thinking about the atomic bombings) and The Philosopher’s Garden.
Mara publishes, lectures, and gives workshops internationally on arts /aesthetics; selfhood; and feminist, East Asian, and environmental philosophy—at the college/graduate school level and also K-12.
Mara’s paintings, in collections in fifteen cities, have been exhibited in New York City, Honolulu, and Philadelphia.
Recent articles 2014-16 are in Philosophy and Literature, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Oxford’s The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and The Oxford Handbooks of World Philosophy and of Japanese Philosophy.
Recent book chapters are:
- 2017 “Agency, Identity, and Aesthetic Experience in Three Post-Atomic Japanese Narratives: Yasunari Kawabata’s The Sound of the Mountain, Rio Kushida’s Thread Hell, and the Anime Film Barefoot Gen,” New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics, Nguyen Minh, ed., Lexington Books (imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
- 2017 Yamasaki Koji and Mara Miller, “Ainu Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art: Replication and Recovery.” In New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics, Nguyen Minh, ed. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books
- 2017: “Beauty, Religion and Tradition in Post-Nuclear Japanese Arts and Aesthetics,” in Artistic Visions and the Promise of Beauty: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Kathleen Higgins, Shakti Maira & Sonia Sikka. Dordrecht: Springer
- 2017 “Thoughts on Chang-Yong Moon and Jin Jeon’s Becoming Who I Was,” Hawaii Council for the Humanities and Hawaii International Film Festival: Film for Thought 2017
- 2016, 2017: Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, Bret Davis, ed. Oxford University Press: “Chapter 23: Japanese and Ainu Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art.” (Online, print) http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199945726.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199945726-e-33 Note: this is a different article than C4 below (Miller 2010)
- Under review: “Visualizing the Past, Envisioning the Future: Unrecognized Religious Dimensions of the Atomic Bomb Memorials”
- 2016 “Atomic/Nuclear Weapons and Energy Technologies (ANWETs): The Need for Wisdom,” in Practical Wisdom in the Age of Technology: Insights, Issues and Questions for a New Millennium, edited by Nikunj Dalal, Ali Intezari, Marty Heitz. New York: Routledge and UK: Gower Publishing: Series: The Practical Wisdom in Leadership and Organization Series. http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=638&series_id=622&calcTitle=1&forthcoming=1 Gower Publishing, 2016.
- 2018 “Early Feminist Aesthetics in Japan: Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shonagon, and A Thousand Years of the Female Voice,” Ryan Musgrave, ed., Feminist Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art: The Power of Critical Visions and Creative Engagements, Springer Press, (ISBN: 978-1-4020-6836-2)