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Eric
Edwin Miller was born in midtown Manhattan, New York City, where he was
raised by his parents, Edwin Miller (Entertainment Editor of Seventeen
Magazine,1946-1988) and Lydia Joel (Editor-in-Chief of Dance Magazine,1956-1970;
Chair of the Dance Department of NYC's High School of the Performing Arts,
1972-1984). Dr
Eric attended Trinity School (grades 2-8), and Stuyvesant High School, both
in NYC. He pursued his undergraduate degree at Swarthmore College,
Oberlin College, and New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized
Study, receiving his B.A. degree in 1984. From
1982 to 2002, Dr Eric and a partner (Diana Dunbar) co-directed Eric &
Co. Video, which was based in NYC. In its early years, this company
documented performances and social and corporate functions; later it also
produced videoconferences and other multimedia events. Dr
Eric has also worked for other new media companies, some of which provided
virtual reality and other interactive entertainment. Dr Eric's primary
function as a media professional (consultant, designer, director-producer) is
to bring the spirit of physically-present storytelling into new media
environments. Dr
Eric developed his interest in storytelling in the following manner:
Throughout high school and college, Dr Eric was involved with theatre as a
writer, director, and performer. As an undergraduate, he was introduced
to the study of Folklore by Dr Phyllis Gorfain of the Department of English,
Oberlin College. Back
in NYC, in his early twenties, Dr Eric met Laura Simms -- a storyteller,
educator, and leader of the modern revival of storytelling -- and he began
studying with and working for her, eventually doing two Independent Studies
with her, one as an undergraduate student, and one as a graduate student, at
NYU. Dr Eric's work for Ms Simms included managing mailing lists;
preparing publicity and advertisements; giving feedback regarding manuscripts
and performances; videotaping performances; and acting as liaison for the
"1995 Month of International Storytelling in New York," which
involved assisting storytellers from England, France, Iran, Africa, and the
USA. Throughout
much of the 1980s and 1990s, Dr Eric was based in New York City's East
Village. Here he worked as a video documenter of performances; and as a
performance and video-installation artist, eventually using videoconferencing
in these events also (an article by Dr Eric about this art work is here). In
1988, Dr Eric entered the Gallatin School M.A. program to further his studies
of oral narrative and interactive telecommunication. The Gallatin
School enables one to study in various parts of NYU, and Dr Eric did much of
his M.A. coursework in the Interactive Telecommunication Program (Tisch
School of the Arts). Dr
Eric conducted M.A. fieldwork in Tamil Nadu, south India, from July 1988 to
July 1989; and then again, from Jan. 1991 to Nov. 1991. He collected
data regarding: traditional storytelling techniques, attending folk and
orthodox storytelling performances and videotaping some of them; and the Silappathikaram
(Epic of the Anklet), a central epic of the Tamil people. He
walked 250 miles in the footsteps of Kannagi, the heroine of the epic, and
visited a tribe said to have been founded by Kannagi some 1600 years
ago. In 1991, while in Madras (now Chennai), Dr Eric self-published a
booklet entitled, "Tamil Nadu's Silappathikaram
(Epic of the Anklet): Ancient Story and Modern Identity."
Dr Eric's M.A.
thesis surveyed visual accompaniments used by storytellers, and argued
for the inclusion of electronic imagery on a large screenin that
family. Dr Eric received his M.A. degree in 1996. From
1996 to 2002, Dr Eric taught a total of eleven courses as an adjunct
professor at St. John's University (Staten Island, NYC campus) and Fordham
University (Lincoln Center, NYC campus). These courses included Expository
Writing, Writing About Literature, The Modern Short Story, American Drama,
The Folktale, and Introduction to Speech Communication. In
Spring 2002, he taught a course entitled, Storytelling, at NYU's
School of Continuing and Professional Studies. In
1999, Dr Eric began work on a Ph.D. in Folklore at the University of
Pennsylvania. His Ph.D. dissertation, "Ethnographic
Videoconferencing,
as Applied to South Indian Children's
Songs/Chants/Dances/Games, and Language Learning," posits that
children's verbal play may assist their language learning process, and
discusses ways play and language learning can occur through
videoconferencing. The
primary research for this project involved being based in a mountain village
with Kani tribal people in southwestern Tamil Nadu (from March 2003 to Dec.
2004). Fruits of this project include a set of traditional-play-based
question-and-answer routines that can be used to teach and learn any
language, especially in vieoconferences. Dr Eric's Ph.D. was awarded in
2010. Dr
Eric studies storytelling (oral narrative) as it occurs in everyday
conversation, as well as in various more formal contexts.
Sociolinguistic and sociokinetic processes -- as they occur both face-to-face
and as mediated by interactive telecommunication technology -- constitute the
basic subject matter of his scholarship. He
is helping to establish Storytelling Studies as an interdisciplinary
field in academia. In 2007, in Chennai, he co-founded the World Storytelling Institute. From
2008 to 2011 he was a Professor of Story and Storytelling at the Image
College of Art, Animation, and Technology.
In 2012, he taught courses in The
Modern Short Story, and Creative
Writing, at the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras. In 2015, he taught public speaking, and
research and writing skills, to MA students in the Dept of Journalism and
Communication, University of Madras.
All of these institutions of higher learning are in Chennai. In
2014, Dr Eric began a M.Sc. course of study in Psychology at the University
of Madras. He is helping to develop
the field of "Storytelling Therapy", one of the Creative Arts
Therapies, alongside Drama Therapy, Poetry Therapy, etc. In 2016, Dr Eric earned a Certificate in
Psychological Counselling from a one-year training course provided by the
Chennai Counsellors Foundation. In
2019, he was awarded the M.Sc. in Psychology from the University of Madras. Dr
Eric enjoys the combination of teaching college students, leading
storytelling workshops (for parents, teachers, business-people,
counsellors/therapists, etc), and providing psychological counselling (for
tennagers and adults) based on principles of Storytelling Therapy. He
also enjoys facilitating and participating in storytelling-related
videoconferences involving training and performances around the world, and is
developing simultaneous translation systems for such use. Dr
Eric serves as a technical director of civic, artistic, business,
educational, and other types of videoconferences. His career is
dedicated to democracy and peace, and to alleviating suffering, through the
use of the most ancient and modern of communication technologies. Dr
Eric has settled in Chennai, where he and Magdalene Jeyarathnam (a Chennai
native, and founder-director of the East West Center for Counselling
and Training, and the Indian Institute of
Psychodrama) have married, and are raising their daughter. A
photo of Dr Eric is here. Dr
Eric's personal website is www.storytellingandvideoconferencing.com
. The website of the NGO he directs is
www.storytellinginstitute.org
. He can be reached at
eric@storytellinginstitute.org , 98403 94282. |
