Margaret R. Miles

Hello: I am an historian of late antiquity by profession. I taught for eighteen years at the Harvard University Divinity School, loving academic life, both the classroom and writing for publication. Specializing on the history of Christianity, I endeavored to employ both sympathetic and critical approaches. I enjoyed the "tasteless historical stories" that interrupt the triumphal story and remind us that "real" history always eludes our attempts to neatly package it. Since I retired in 2002 I have written more autobiographically, convinced that it is important - and more honest - to acknowledge the experiences that direct the author's interpretive perspective than to write "objectively," masking personal interests. Recent books include both research books and books that explore a problem that is both personal and social: AUGUSTINE AND THE FUNDAMENTALIST'S DAUGHTER, GETTING HERE FROM THERE (with Hiroko Sakomura), THE WENDELL COCKTAIL, and THE LONG GOODBYE: DEMENTIA DIARIES. I write to think my way through such issues as the long term effects of growing up in a fundamentalist home, the long process of education and psychotherapy that brought me to a professorship at Harvard, my brother's depression, and my husband's dementia. I write in the faith that deeply personal experiences and thoughts, honestly communicated, can articulate common - even universal - experience and contribute to the urgent search for resources with which to address social problems.