M.A. Miller Named 2026 ACLS Fellow for Forthcoming Monograph

M.A. Miller is Assistant Professor of Gender, Race, and Health in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program (WGSS) and English Department at Washington State University. His most recent project, Gender Unconformities: Deep Time’s Trans Matters, earned him the prestigious ACLS Fellowship earlier this year. In addition to this work, Miller is widely published in journals such as Victorian Studies and Nineteenth-Century Literature, and is also working on a second monograph entitled Trans*-imperial Ecologies: Empires’ Cultivation of the Ideal Trans Subject. 

In a recent interview M.A. Miller shared his reaction to receiving the 2026 ACLS Fellowship, the events that shaped his most recent work, and his experience as a UC Davis PhD alum. 

https://www.acls.org/fellow-grantees/m-a-miller/

Initial Reactions to the 2026 ACLS Fellowship

When M.A. Miller shared the moment he first saw the email from the 2026 ACLS Fellowship Committee, he remembered thinking - “this is a really mean way to be rejected.” It wasn’t until he kept reading and the words of congratulations appeared that reality began to sink in; M.A. was indeed one of the recipients of this prestigious award. Reflecting on these initial expectations, M.A. noted that it stemmed from the extremely competitive nature of the award and the “many brilliant and smart people competing for a scarce number of opportunities.” With the support from this fellowship, recipients are able to write and research for a full year without the demands of other teaching-related responsibilities. This is an especially significant freedom for M.A., whose position as an assistant professor at Washington State University sees him instructing highly engaged classes, each requiring a different teaching approach. Hearing him speak about his courses, it is clear that M.A. has a passion for teaching that is fueled by a great deal of mental and time-related resources. The prospect afforded by the fellowship - of devoting significant time to writing and cultivating a writerly space - is one that M.A. said is “a singular dream.”

The Inspiration Behind Gender Unconformities: Deep Time’s Trans Matters

M.A.’s current project came out of his dissertation work but in a largely unexpected way. Reflecting on the end of his dissertation process, M.A. noted that it “felt like two competing book ideas.” While this wasn’t a feeling he relished during the completion stage of his dissertation, one of these strands became the foundation for M.A’s thinking on deep time and trans matter in Gender Unconformities. The inspiration for taking this strand as a foregrounding focus came when M.A. was rereading Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices, a monograph by UC Davis alum Toby Beauchamp. The book is “interested in what happens to bodies that get labeled as trans whether they identify this way themselves or not.” Reading this book for the second time, M.A. found the hinge that was missing in his dissertation thinking and Gender Unconformities began to take shape. At its core, the project examines the ways in which a labor history of transness shifts current understandings of transhistories in the pre-20th century archive, specifically through the transformation of the body before the term transgender takes shape historically. Speaking about his interest in reexamining the archive, M.A. said “I’m interested in moving outside of sexology and medical histories [and] focusing on 19th-century empire and different forms of extractive labor and [how] these sediments adhere to and impress onto the flesh.” Moving away from previous scholarly focus on hyperidentity and self-determination as it relates to transness, M.A.'s current research is concerned with how “bodies get reclassified and resolved into different labor positions and laboring regimes - how bodies engaging in forms of labor are reclassified.”

Unexpected Turns in the Archive

Gender Unconformities centers around four geological materials - chalk, coal, red ochre, and tin - that anchor a discussion of labor reclassifying gendered bodies. Like the variety of minerals M.A. examines in his project, the archive he uses to explore labor interactions with these materials is diverse. Ranging from census data and banking documents to literary texts and poetry, M.A. traces labor categories like “males five and under, non-miners” and “females five and under” to trace how gendered labor categories within this archive move bodies in and out of gendered spheres via labor.

When I asked him whether his research took any unexpected turns, M.A. immediately mentioned his third chapter on red ochre and the significant role that Punjabi poetry has taken within this material discussion. What began as a conference abstract steadily shifted into an examination of Sufi devotional poetry and the ways in which red ochre surfaced in these texts in surprising yet productive ways. In particular, M.A. shared one example of two Sufi poets/mystics from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who are cited as wearing robes dyed from the red earth of the local province, called geru - a Hindi term for red ochre. These robes, M.A. explained, were used in a specific religious ceremony enacting a wedding to God. In 19th-century imperial British documents, however, the term is misapplied as “guru,” or a “venerated religious instructor.” M.A. read that typographical error as a moment that “allows the colonial archive to conflate the religious body with its religious matter in service of commodifying both rock and devotional laborer.” The ultimate outcome of this unexpected turn is a focus on spirituality within this gendered framework of labor that also explores the ways in which this mistranslation “renders this particular South Asian earth [as] governable,” as well as governing the gender variance at play in this spiritual practice.

Another unexpected turn came with M.A.’s research on tin in the Cornwall area, a focus he attributes to his graduate mentor and dissertation chair Liz Miller. Reflecting on the formation of this particular chapter, M.A. said, “Liz put a kernel in my ear about several texts during my dissertation, [including] an article in The Guardian about Tanoa Sasraku’s work.” A Plymouth-based artist, Sasraku soaks her terratypes in the waters of rural Britain. M.A. became intrigued with Sasraku’s engagement with the geological material of England and emailed her, interested in “her particular art installations and [...] experiences in that landscape.” Nearly five years later, the two share a long friendship that has seen them pigment foraging in Cornwall and exploring the “beautiful and sublime Cornish mining wasteland.” Reflecting on their friendship, M.A. notes that “so much of the inspiration for this book has come from conversations with Tanoa,” an inspiration that also extends to the cover of Gender Unconformities, which features one of Sasraku’s terratypes.

Finding New Rhythms at Washington State

M.A. is currently an assistant professor at Washington State University where he “feels really fortunate” to be part of a program that “is supportive, even during a time when [these] kinds of programs are disappearing or slowly eroding because of concerns around funding” or course content. The ability to teach a broad range of students has also created interesting spaces for important discussions on gender. Reflecting on one GWS course with a number of non-majors, M.A. appreciated the “push and pull dialogue” he is able to have with students on gender identity, where students were challenged to “ask more questions [ and] be more open to come to a space of critical thinking that neither condemns nor valorizes the topic at hand.” As a trans man, M.A. said, “it’s a nice opportunity where I feel comfortable for men who come into my classroom to discuss how gender has harmed them and how this trickles down” into other areas of life. This openness and opportunity for meaningful dialogue extends in interesting ways to the town where M.A. now lives. When I asked what surprised him about his new hometown, M.A. quickly mentioned the “quaint, quirky community life” that he found upon moving there. It was “unexpected in the best way possible,” M.A. said, “and really so cool. [There are] hippie folks from the 60s who’ve been here as artists all their lives, a sweet burning man tribe, [and a welcoming] LGBTQ group.”

The natural landscape around Washington State has also been a welcome surprise for M.A., whose Colorado roots make him partial to more mountainous views. It is a happy change for M.A, who finds himself drawn to the rolling hills that characterize the Palouse region, citing his love of nature as "an outdoorsy country boy.” With the dedicated time that he will now have for his monograph project, M.A. hopes to enjoy more time outdoors among the “green, mesmerizing” hills and taking long walks in his neighborhood, where he enjoys feeding the local farmlife - including horses, donkeys, and cows.

Reflections on the PhD Journey at UC Davis

“I have such nostalgia for my time at UC Davis.” These were the first words M.A. spoke when I asked him about his time in the English PhD program. What felt so exciting for M.A. about working with the faculty at UC Davis were “the ways in which they engaged a kind of Victorianism [that was] deeply historicist but very different directionally.” Citing his dissertation committee members Liz Miller, Parama Roy, and Kathleen Frederickson, M.A. praised their "phenomenal mentorship [in] allowing me to read and be methodologically broad,” while also providing guidance when lines of research needed to be reined in. Reflecting on how these different faculty guided his research and writing process, M.A. expressed gratitude for the freedom he was given to be “decolonial master of none,” to read and think as he needed to rather than giving into the pressure to fit into a particular scholarly mould. This is expressed practically in the wide array of courses that M.A. completed at UC Davis, including 18th-century literary classes with Tobias Meneley. “I wouldn’t be as precise of an historian if it wasn’t for [Tobias],” M.A. noted. “He is a phenomenal person who is really comfortable pushing back on your ideas.” While this wasn’t easy for him at the time, M.A. credits Tobias’s “adept reading of Marx and capital” with shaping his thinking of historical materialism: “without his pushing and prodding at certain analyses I was trying to articulate, I wouldn’t be as precise as I am today.”

Advice for Current Graduate Students

One piece of advice M.A. shared with current graduate students was “reading widely, taking classes that are outside of your expected trajectory.” This advice comes from direct experience in a course M.A. took with Hsuan Hsu entitled “Geographies of Risk.” It changed the way he thinks about the environment and the ways in which this shift in perspective impacts his thinking on sex and gender. While M.A. characterizes his academic focus as “pretty disparate” with Hsuan these days, he credits that class with shaping “so much of how [they] think and are as a scholar.” This advice also extends to being “willing to be open to some of the most unexpected scholars that are around you,” to see them as “preeminent” for your research and “how you might see yourself as a young scholar.” As we chatted through a few final stories from his graduate days - preliminary examination prep, finding your teaching groove, and navigating awkward social moments - M.A. shared one last piece of advice: “We were all once in grad school and the training wheels, they come off, and you kind of fumble your way.” But find your way you will.