Yale School - Move To Irvine

Move To Irvine

After teaching at Yale from 1972 to 1986, J. Hillis Miller left for the University of California, Irvine, where he is today Distinguished Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature.

Shortly after J. Hillis Miller's arrival at UC Irvine in 1986, Derrida himself became Professor of the Humanities at UCI. Derrida remained at UCI until 2003, one year before his death. Until his death, Derrida had slowly been turning over lecture manuscripts, journals and other materials to UCI’s special collections library under an agreement he signed in 1990. After Derrida’s death, his widow and sons said they wanted copies of UCI’s archives shared with the Institute of Contemporary Publishing Archives in France. The university had sued in an attempt to get manuscripts and correspondence from Derrida’s widow and children that it believed the philosopher had promised to UC Irvine’s collection, although the suit was dropped in 2007.

The Irvine Langson Library Special Collections also houses the Paul de Man Papers, a collection of personal and professional papers documenting de Man's work in comparative literature.