Stuart Miller

Professor Emeritus

Hebrew and Judaic Studies

Education

Ph.D., New York University, 1980

Areas of Expertise

Greco-Roman Palestine, Rabbinic/Talmudic Literature, History of Judaism

Bio:

Stuart S. Miller is Professor of Hebrew, History, and Judaic Studies and chair of the Hebrew and Judaic Studies Section (“HEJS”) in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. He also serves as the Academic Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life and is responsible for the direction of academic offerings in Judaic Studies at UConn. In addition, he is a member of the Classics and Mediterranean Studies section in LCL. Professor Miller is a specialist in the history and literature of the Jews of Roman and Late Antique Palestine and has worked closely with archaeologists, having served for many years on the staff of the Sepphoris Regional Project. His earlier book publications include, Studies in the History and Traditions of Sepphoris (E. J. Brill, 1984) and Sages and Commoners in Late Antique ’Erez Israel: A Philological Inquiry into Local Traditions in Talmud Yerushalmi (Mohr-Siebeck, 2006). His most recent book, At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity among the Jews of Roman Galilee, appeared in 2015 in the Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplement Series (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht). This monograph is a sweeping rethinking of how ritual purity rites, especially ritual immersion, are studied and how archaeological finds are to be understood in light of literary evidence, and vice versa. Special attention is given to the perspectives on ritual purity and immersion in early Christianity, especially as reflected in a Greek fragment from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, which depicts a debate on the subject between Jesus and a High Priest on the Temple Mount. In 2012 Professor Miller, along with then state archaeologist Nicholas Bellantoni, co-directed a UConn sponsored excavation of a ritual bath that once belonged to the New England Hebrew Farmers of the Emanuel Society, a Jewish agricultural community that was founded in the early 1890’s in Chesterfield, Ct. Professor Miller has published many articles that have appeared in the Association for Jewish Studies Review, Harvard Theological Review, Jewish Quarterly Review, Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period, Journal of Jewish Studies, Historia, and in numerous edited volumes. He is also a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Curriculum Vitae