Miller started his career as a member of the faculty at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in 1953. During this time, Miller was heavily influenced by fellow Johns Hopkins professor and Belgian literary critic Georges Poulet and the Geneva School of literary criticism, which Miller characterized as "the consciousness of the consciousness of another, the transposition of the mental universe of an author into the interior space of the critic's mind." This was also the time that was introduced to Paul de Man who was a member of a faculty and Jacques Derrida, a visiting professor, with whom he would remain associated.