Laura Miller

Miller is a Californio, a descendant of the founding settlers and escort soldiers of the Pueblo de Los Angeles (present day Los Angeles, California) in 1781.

Laura Miller (born December 15, 1953) is an American anthropologist and the Ei'ichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of Japanese Studies and Professor of History at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a double major in Asian studies and anthropology in 1977, and completed a Master of Arts degree in anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1983 on the topic of aizuchi Japanese listening behavior.

Her 1988 UCLA doctorate in anthropology was a linguistic anthropology study of interethnic communication among co-workers in Japan.

Miller's research interests are in the fields of interdisciplinary Japan studies and linguistic anthropology.

She has done research on diverse topics, including divination, the kawaii aesthetic, conduct literature, youth fashion and the beauty industry, and historic figures such as Himiko and Abe no Seimei.

Her linguistic anthropology research has included studies of Japanese youth slang, writing systems, gendered linguistic performances, folklinguistic theories, loanwords, and interethnic communication.

Miller also produced some research on Russian language acquisition.

Diva Nation: Female Icons from Japanese Cultural History.

Edited by Laura Miller and Rebecca Copeland.

Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

"Purikura: Expressive energy in female self photography."

In Introducing Japanese Popular Culture, edited by Alisa Freedman and Toby Slade.

University of California Press, 2006.

Bad Girls of Japan.

Edited by Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley.

She held various academic positions and jobs in both the United States and Japan before accepting this named chair in 2010.

University of California Press, 2011.

Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics.

International Journal of Japanese Sociology 20 (1), 2011.

"Subversive script and novel graphs in Japanese girls’ culture."

Stanford University Press, 2013.

Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan.

Edited by Jan Bardsley and Laura Miller.

University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

"Cute masquerade and the pimping of Japan."

Japanese Language and Literature 49 (2), 2015.

"Rebranding Himiko, the Shaman Queen of Ancient History."

Mechademia, An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and the Fan Arts.

Routledge, 2017.

"Girl culture in East Asia." Transnational Asia: an online interdisciplinary journal 1(2) 2017.

"Japanese tarot cards."

ASIA Network Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Art 24 (1), 2017.

"Japan’s trendy Word Grand Prix and Kanji of the Year: Commodified language forms in multiple contexts."

In Language and Materiality: Ethnographic and Theoretical Explorations, edited by Jillian Cavanaugh and Shalini Shankar.

Cambridge University Press, 2017.

"Linguistic folk theories and foreign celebrities of the past."

University of California Press, 2018.

Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan.

Edited by Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller, and Christine Yano.