Dr. Lather and Mrs. Miller: An Appreciation

• In Event: Sounds of Silences Still Breaking: A Celebration of Janet Louise Miller's Life and Her Contributions to the Field of Curriculum Studies

Abstract

This appreciation of the life and contributions of Janet Miller to the field of Curriculum Studies is grounded in forty years of friendship. The title is from a communique we received at one of the many hotel rooms we shared at one of the many conferences we attended over the years, this one from the manager regarding moving our room due to noisy celebrants down the hall. This caught our fancy and we kept the greeting as the invite to the Curriculum Theory Advice Booth that we set up at one of the almost forty Bergamo Curriculum Conferences that we attended. Janet, of course, was key in developing that conference from its inception. I was just one of the many lucky folks who got to deepen my professional and personal relations to the field there.

What I write for the book will continue to probe those memories with a focus on her academic contributions, the books and papers and conference sessions and discussions both formal and informal that have helped me situate myself in a field that was not always a good fit. She was prime in helping me to identify myself with Curriculum Studies, as she was in helping the field develop into something inclusive of the many of us who didn’t fit very well into teacher education or colleges of education or AERA or curriculum itself.

What she helped bring to the reconceptualization of the field, in addition to an amazing amount of sheer hard work, was feminism and critical theory and, later, the post theories. The oftentimes yeoman labor of editing The Journal of Curriculum Studies and organizing the Bergamo Conference, as well as VP-ing Division B of AERA, was but background to her teacherly and scholarly contributions. It is those that I will focus on along with as many funny stories as I can remember, including, of course, the (in)famous Camp Theory skit at the Banff instantiation of the Bergamo Conference.

Author

• Patti A. Lather, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author