Miles Orvell is a professor of English and American studies at Temple University.^[1] He is the founding editor of the Encyclopedia of American Studies.^[2][3]

Orvell received his B.A. from Columbia University and Ph.D. from Harvard University.^[4] He joined the faculty of Temple University in 1969.^[3]

Orvell has written on literary criticism and American cultural history with a specialization in visual culture.^[1][5][6][7] He has also written about the intersections between technology and culture as well as small-town life in America and its role in American culture and identity.^[8][9] From 2003 to 2011, he was the editor of the Encyclopedia of American Studies.^[2]

His book, The Real Thing, inspired British artist Holly Hendry's exhibition The Dump Is Full of Images at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2019.^[10]

• Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography, and the Spectacle of Destruction (Oxford University Press, 2021)
• Photography in America (Oxford University Press, 2016)
• The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940. 25th Anniversary edition, 2014. (University of North Carolina Press)
• Rethinking the American City: An International Dialogue, co-edited with Klaus Benesch (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)
• The Death and Life of Main Street: Small Towns in American Memory, Space, and Community (University of North Carolina Press, 2012)
• John Vachon’s America, Photographs and Letters from the Depression to World War II (University of California Press, 2003)
• American Photography (Oxford History of Art Series, Oxford University Press, 2003)
• After the Machine: Visual Arts and the Erasing of Cultural Boundaries (University Press of Mississippi, 1995)
• Invisible Parade: The Fiction of Flannery O'Connor (Temple University Press, 1972). Reprinted, with a new preface, as Flannery O'Connor: An Introduction (University Press of Mississippi, Fall 1991)

Orvell received the Bode-Pearson Prize from the American Studies Association for lifetime achievement in American studies.^[3]