Dr. E. Joan Miller

Dr. E. Joan Miller, Professor Emerita of Geography at Illinois State University, earned her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A dissertation fellowship from the Society of Woman Geographers supported her field work in the Ozark Mountains. Her dissertation was based on the hypothesis that nonmaterial folk matters such as tales, songs, proverbs, superstitions, speech forms, and place names could be used as documentation in historical geography. Her findings were published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and the Professional Geographer. Selected by her colleagues to deliver the College of Arts and Sciences Lecture in 1975, she served on departmental and college committees, presented papers at national meetings, and taught nearly 10,000 students, graduate and undergraduate, during the course of her distinguished career.

In addition, she completed an account of her experiences as a student in England during World War II. Her alma mater, Girton College Cambridge University, requested the information and it may be found online at http://www.geo.ilstu.edu/downloads/Miller.pdf . In her retirement she wrote a review of the second edition of the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names. She was actively involved in the establishment of the George J. Miller archives at Minnesota State University Mankato, writing the fifty years of history of the Normal Rotary Club, and expediting the relocation of their archives.