Eadington Gaming Fellow Robert Miller | In Residence February 24-March 21

Special Collections and the Center for Gaming Research are delighted to welcome Eadington Gaming Fellow, Robert W. Miller.

Robert Miller is a doctoral candidate in Modern European History at the University of Kansas, under the direction of Dr. Chris Forth. He received degrees in History, Sociology, and Political Science from Eastern Kentucky University, and a Master of Arts degree in History from the University of Kansas.  His research interests include histories of travel, tourism, culture, and consumption. He is primarily a historian of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also conducts research in international history. Mr. Miller’s current project is his dissertation “Constructing a Spatial Imaginary: The Formation and Re-presentation of Monte Carlo as a Vacation-Leisure Paradise, 1854-1970.”  The project centers on the way in which casino concessionaires and civic planners established an imaginary of elite, cosmopolitan luxury surrounding the casino-resort of Monte Carlo, and the way in which visitors to the city (and popular culture) perpetuated or changed such an imaginary.

Why he's coming to Special Collections:
"I will utilize manuscripts, travelogues, photographs, menus, and postcards to conduct a comparative study of casino-resort cities, including Las Vegas, Paris, Baden-Baden, and Monte Carlo.  A majority of this study will consist of visual analysis, as I seek to explore the ways in which casino-resort towns built upon, referenced, or influenced each other's reputations through the use of architecture, décor, entertainment, sport, gastronomy, or gambling itself."

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