Brief Biography

I joined the University of West Florida in 1990 and teach graduate and undergraduate courses in East-Central European as well as Balkan, Russian, Soviet, German, and Modern European history.  I am a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and completed my doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh in 1989 and in 1989-1990 was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.  I have made numerous research trips to East-Central Europe, particularly the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and I have traveled widely throughout Europe.  In 1999 the University of Pittsburgh published my monograph, Forging Political Compromise: Antonín Švehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party (1918-1933), which deals with agrarian politics and democracy in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars.  It appears in Czech translation as Antonín Švehla mistr kompromisu (Argo, 2001).  In 2001 Czech historians voted the Czech translation of the book on Švehla as the best historical work that year (tied with one other) by a foreign author.  I also co-edited with two other historians K úloze a významu agrárního hnutí v českých a československých dějinách [The Significance and Meaning of the Agrarian Movement in Czech and Czechoslovak History] (Charles University, 2001).  I have published a dozen articles and chapters related to Slovak and Czech agricultural politics, democracy in the Czechoslovak First Republic, and other topics both in Czech and in English.  I currently am writing a coauthored book on consociationalism in the Habsburg Monarchy and the Czechoslvoak First Republic with Philip J. Howe and Thomas A. Lorman.  The manuscript is complete, and we are in the editing stage.  I also am working on a monograph dealing with the creation of new agricultural settlements on land obtained from the great estates during the land reform between the world wars in Czechoslovakia. My teaching interests include Modern Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Balkans, European agricultural history, and Europe between the world wars.

I have two children from a first marriage, Thomas G. and Karl J. Miller, both of whom live in Pittsburgh, PA, and I am the single father of two children from a second marriage, Martin J. and Klára E. Miller.  I also have two grandsons, Emerson James and Brysen Bear, who are the sons of Tom and his wife, Leigh.