The Thought Project - Episode 46 - Interview with Nancy K. Miller

Nancy K. Miller is a distinguished professor of English, French, and comparative literature and teaches in the M.A. Program in Women's and Gender studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including, most recently, My Brilliant Friends (Columbia University Press, 2019), which tells the story of the deep friendships she formed with Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane Middlebrook — colleagues in the academy who tragically passed away between 2001 and 2007. During the writing of the book, Miller is confronted with her own mortality when she is diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer — perhaps confronting the end of her life without her dear friends. These friendships are complicated and interlocking, foundational to Miller’s life and her identities as a scholar and as a feminist, which were forged at the beginning of second-wave feminism during the 1970s.