Presentations and Conversations

Audio

Listen to an interview with Tiya on Living on Earth’s This Week’s Show. To kick off Women’s History Month, we take a look at the history of women outdoors in America. From abolitionist Harriet Tubman to novelist Louisa May Alcott, some of the country’s most important women trailblazers shared a connection with the natural world in their girlhood. According to author Tiya Miles in her book Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, this time spent in the outdoors prepared these women to become pioneers in their fields. She joins Host Paloma Beltran for more (interview begins at 16:02). Read the transcript of Tiya’s interview.

“Beyond The Ghosts of the South w/ Professor Tiya Miles” — In this podcast episode of Crawlspace – True Crime & Mysteries, Tim Pilleri & Lance Reenstierna travel to the Haunted South with Tiya to explore the impact dark tourism in the South had on Tiya and how it led her to shine a light on the realities of these tales.

“OBP’s Summer Book Club” — Farai Chideya talks with Tiya about her book All That She Carried and “one family heirloom from the enslavement period that remarkably stood the test of time.” Aired on July 28, 2023. Tiya’s interview begins at 20:18.

“Tiya’s Interview on the Podcast Art Works“ — Tiya discusses the challenges of writing a novel as an historian, the freedom in fiction to explore new themes and ideas, and how her experiences writing her debut novel helped shape her writing in All That She Carried. Aired Jun 21, 2023. Produced by the National Endowment for the Arts.

“A Historian Reckons With Gaps in the Archives” — WNYC Studios On The Media host Brooke Gladstone asks Tiya about her meditative approach to history and her career as a historical fiction writer. Miles explains what she learned about the women behind Ashley’s sack by combing the archives, and using her imagination to consider what their lives looked like. Aired March 3, 2023.

“The Problem with Ghosts: The ghosts that visit us, the ghosts that never do, and the ghosts that walk among us.” — On this episode of This American Life, Tiya talks with reporter Chenjerai Kumanyika on the topic of ghost tours. Tiya shares how her research on these stories led her to discover an industry built on the fabricated lives and deaths of enslaved people and their enslavers. [Coverage of the Savannah ghost stories starts at minute 8:34. Tiya begins speaking at minute 16:00.] Episode 793 aired on March 10, 2023.

“Ideas with Nahlah Ayed” — A cotton sack from the time of slavery bears the first names of a mother and her daughter, who was sold at the age of nine. Tiya scours the historical documentary record to discover who these women were and reveals their story of love in her book, All That She Carried — winner of the 2022 Cundill History Prize. Aired: Feb. 20, 2023

“Black Native History with Dr. Tiya Miles” —  On the first episode in the series Black Native History on All My Relations Podcast, Tiya talks with the hosts about the historical foundations and intersection of relationships between Black and Native populations starting with the circumstances of their introduction during the time of the white settler invasion of the Americas.

“’All That She Carried’ tells the story of generations of Black women and the love that binds them” — Tiya talks to NPR‘s Here & Now host Scott Tong about her latest book All That She Carried, a nominee for the 2021 National Book Award, and how “Ashley’s sack is a different kind of monument to the past; it’s not huge, it’s not made of stone, it’s not in the middle of a town square, and yet it speaks as loudly…” Listen to Tiya’s interview.

“How A Cotton Sack, Passed Down Over Generations, Tells A Larger Story About Slavery – NPR” — In this interview Tiya talks with NPR’s Arun Venugopal about her book All That She Carried — highlighting the story of a single cotton sack passed down over generations; from Rose, an enslaved woman, who gives the sack to her young daughter Ashley before she is sold to eventually finding its way to her great-granddaughter Ruth who embroiders the sack. Venugopal summarizes, “In the words of author Tiya Miles, this book is about the burdens of being human in an inhumane world, and about how Black women in particular have responded to systemic erasure with art, compassion and love.” Listen to Tiya’s interview (transcript available).

Tiya talks with the hosts of the podcast The Extreme History Project: The Dirt on the Past about her book All That She Carried — why she felt compelled to write about this significant object, her process, and why this story of resilience and of love passed down through generations of women is important today as we, as a nation, struggle with how to understand our hard histories and reconcile our past in a way that can help us move forward together. Episode date August 25, 2021. Listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts or listen online.

“Rising Sea Levels Threaten MBTA’s Blue Line“ — Tiya discusses her new book, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, on Radio Boston (WBUR) with host Tiziana Dearing. June 2021.

“The WhiteWashed Ghost” — In The History of Ghosts, a series on BBC Radio, Kirsty Logan explores the history of ghost lore. In episode 6, “The Whitewashed Ghost” (air date October 26, 2020), the topic is one of which Tiya is deeply familiar — the romanticization of relationships between slave owners and enslaved young women and girls. In the “Extra Interview,” Tiya shares her experiences of stumbling into the world of Ghost Tours in the Southern United States, how the stories we tell, and how we tell them, can reshape the way we experience history as well as the present day, and how these experiences inspired her to write her own ghost story, The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts. Listen to Tiya’s in-depth interview: The Haunted South.

“Reading the Reckoning: Tiya Miles” — Tiya was interviewed on WNYC’s The Takeaway. “What I wanted to do in this book was to actually look at the earliest moments of Detroit’s formation and look at it in a different way to try to see the people who were actually being exploited whose labor was being stolen in the process of developing this place,” says Miles.”  February 2018.

Tiya talked with T Hetzel about researching long term projects, what is missing from historical record, and street names. She also read from The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits. Listen to their discussion. January 2018.

“Strange Fruit: That Ghost Was Not A ‘Mistress’“ — Tiya discusses ghost tourism and representations of slavery with Kaila Story and Jaison Gardner, hosts of “Strange Fruit” (NPR Louisville). October 2017.

‘To the Best of Our Knowledge: Uncovering the Buried History of Savannah’s “Ghost Tours”’ — Tiya discusses ghost tourism and representations of slavery with Steve Paulson, host of “To The Best of Our Knowledge” (Wisconsin Public Radio). October 2017.

‘“I Got Indian in My Family”: An Another Round Takeover’ — Tiya discusses the relationship between Native Americans and Black people on the topic of tracing one’s roots and Native heritage on podcast episode 88 of ”Another Round.” Tiya’s segment begins around the 13:04 minute mark. Recorded in April 2017.

Tiya joined host Gerald Prokopowicz on the podcast Civil War History to discuss the “notion of the ghost tour” at Civil War sites. Listen to the podcast episode from December 2016.

“How Ghost Tours Often Exploit African-American History” — Tiya talked with Here & Now’s Robin Young about her new book “Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era.“

“How Ghost Tours Often Exploit African-American History” — In October 2015, Tiya talked with Here & Now’s Robin Young about her new book “Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era.“  This interview was revisited in 2016.

“This Michigan woman was a conductor on the Underground Railroad” — Tiya discusses the heroic role Laura Smith Haviland played in the anti-slavery movement in Michigan and the Midwest on Michigan Public Radio in July 2014.

“The History of Belle Isle” — Tiya was interviewed on WDET-FM’s “The Craig Fahle Show” regarding the history of Detroit’s Belle Isle park. February 2013.

“Historian Chronicles Intersection of Native-American and African-American Culture in Old South”  — Tiya speaks with Steve Goss from WABE Atlanta about the Chief Vann House and her research on Native-American and African-American cultures. February 2012.

“Toward Living Memory” — Tiya speaks with host Krista Tippett on the NPR show, On Being, for Black History Month in February 2012.

“Native Americans As Slaves, Slave Owners In North” — Tiya speaks with NPR host Michel Martin about shedding light on the unexplored history of Native American and African-American slavery in Michigan, January 2012.

“Native America Calling” — Originally aired on live radio interview on KTQX 91.5 FM Fresno, KIDE 91.3 FM Hoopa, KMPO 88.7 FM Modesto/Stockton. Topics included: What types of dynamics are exposed when “home for the holidays” includes bringing home a so-called outsider? Who is considered an outsider to your family? November 2011.

Tiya was interviewed by Tomeka Weatherspoon with the Kansas City, MO NPR station, KQUR, on the Central Standard show. (Segment is in the last 10 minutes of the show.)

“America’s 2nd Largest Indian Tribe Expels Blacks” — A radio interview by Tiya with NPR on why the Cherokee Nation recently stripped citizenship from a majority of African-Americans. Published on National Public Radio in September 2011.

“African Americans & Native Americans—A Shared Experience?” — Listen to this podcast from a 2007 radio interview on the NPR KERA (Dallas) “Think” Talk Show.

In Print

“In conversation with Tiya Miles” — The Women’s Prize Trust spoke to Tiya about her writing, research and current reads. Published March 2024.

“For Tiya Miles, Girlhood Reading Was ‘My Escape and Joy’” — “My favorite author was Madeleine L’Engle,” says the National Book Award-winning historian, whose new book is “Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation.” “In middle school I would ride the city bus to the public library and check out L’Engle’s novels for teens.” Published October 12, 2023 in the The New York Times.

“Girls gone wild — Harriet Tubman, Louisa May Alcott, and the freedoms they found outdoors” — Craig Feldman from the Boston Globe talks with Tiya about her book Wild Girls. They discuss Tiya’s research for the book, some of the ways the natural environment shaped the women she writes about and how these women, in particular, challenge the narratives that many Americans grew up with. Published September 17, 2023.

“Reinspired by true events” — In an interview with The Harvard Gazette, Tiya discusses what inspired her first novel The Cherokee Rose and why a recent tribal reckoning led her to revisit it. Published July 10, 2023.

“Q&A: How to Write Rural Historical Fiction, With Tiya Miles” — In her interview with The Daily Yonder, Tiya discusses her process to writing historical fiction that accurately reflects the time and people featured in her work. Published June 30, 2023.

“Interview” — In her interview with South Writ Large, Tiya shares her inspiration, challenges, and intent behind her highly acclaimed book All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake. Winter 2022.

Tiya discusses her experience writing the book All That She Carried with author Deborah Kalb on Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb. January 2022.

“Tiya Miles writes history but she reads everything” — What’s on Tiya’s reading list? Find out in her interview with The Boston Globe. Published Oct 7, 2021.

“Black Feminist in Public: Ahead of Juneteenth, Tiya Miles Explores the Historical Baggage of Slavery”  — ‘We are here because our ancestors were extraordinary, and that is a point of pride. They fought their way out of all of those ropes and chains. We can be proud of that, and I think that’s what this work is about.’ Tiya is interviewed by Janell Hobson in advance of Juneteenth as part of the Black Feminist in Public series in Ms. Published June 17, 2021.

“Understanding the Horror of Slavery Is Impossible. But a Simple Cotton Sack Can Bring Us Closer.” — From pecans to maternal empathy; in a moving and thoughtful interview with Slate, Tiya shares some of what she felt and experienced researching and writing All That She Carried. Published June 13, 2021.

“An Ordinary Treasure: PW Talks with Tiya Miles” — Tiya was interviewed by Publishers Weekly on the material and symbolic significance of a cotton sack packed by an enslaved mother for her nine-year-old daughter, Ashley, the subject in her upcoming book All That She Carried (Random House, June 2021).

“Crowd-sourcing the story of a people” — Tiya describes how public history can reshape our views of the past and present in an interview with The Harvard Gazette. Published August 27, 2020.

“The U.S. exists only because of foundational expropriation of North American indigenous lands.”  Tiya talked to Teaching Tolerance about why we can’t understand American history without first understanding the shared history of African Americans and Indigenous Americans. Spring 2020.

“Witnessing Pain, Recalling Knowledge – Reflections On Leopold And Land For Marginalized Populations” — Tiya shares her reflections on Aldo Leopold and the complicated relationship between land and marginalized populations in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio. January 2020.

“‘The Dawn of Detroit’: An Interview with Historian Tiya Miles” — Alaina E. Roberts, the Dietrich Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh, interviews Professor Tiya about her new book, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of Straits. Published in Black Perspectives, September 2018.

“Who Lived, Who Died, Who Told the Story? The Crazy Wisdom Interview with Dawn of Detroit Author Tiya Miles” — In her interview with Tiya, writer Kirsten Mowrey likens The Dawn of Detroit to a “Midwest cousin of the Broadway musical Hamilton, telling the stories of early Detroiters that history has overlooked.”

“Tiya Miles to discuss Detroit’s slaveholding days at the Detroit Public Library” — The Detroit Metro Times spoke with Tiya in anticipation of her January appearance at the Detroit Public Library’s Main Branch in Detroit. January 2018.

“How Several Campuses Are Extinguishing The Burning Crosses Of Racism” — Tiya was interviewed on the NPR show (WGBH-Boston) “On Campus” during a segment of their 2017 year-end wrap-up. She discussed how universities need to be more creative and strategic about how they respond to rising incidents of racism on campus in the United States. Read the write-up and listen to the extended interview. January 2018.

Tiya discusses her experience writing the book The Dawn of Detroit with author Deborah Kalb on Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb. December 2017.

“[Q&A] Tiya Miles on History, Historical Fiction, and “Structured Imagination”” — Tiya was interviewed about her work and her process in writing The Cherokee Rose. National Trust for Historic Preservation. August 2015.

“A Conversation with Tiya Miles” — Read the interview as it appeared in the spring edition of the The American Historian published by the Organization of American Historians, May 2015.

“Scholar’s debut novel ties black, Native-American history” — An in-depth write-up and interview with Tiya discussing the upcoming launch of her first novel The Cherokee Rose, where she draws inspiration in life and work, the importance of family, and the role of history in shaping who we are. The Detroit Free Press. March 2015.

“White Mayor, Black Wife: NYC Shatters an Image” — Tiya was interviewed for an AP article about Bill de Blasio and his interracial marriage. November 2013.

“Details of slave life under Cherokees emerge in new book” — An interview with Tiya on her newly published book, The House on Diamond Hill. Published in the Bay State Banner, September 2010.

“An Interview with Associate Professor Tiya Miles” in the Winter 2010 issue of the newsletter for the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

“Ties That Bind: An Interview with Tiya Miles” — A 2007 interview by the Monthly Review.

“Faculty Profile: Interview with Tiya Miles” — A 2005 interview that appeared in the newsletter of the department of American Culture at the University of Michigan.

Video

Sundays@Home: In Conversation with Dr. Tiya Miles, Author of “All That She Carried.” (Mar 30, 2022)

NWHM and Dr. Martha S. Jones joined in conversation with Dr. Tiya Miles, author of “All That She Carried,” for this special Sundays@Home program, followed by a live Q&A.

A Simple Cotton Sack: A Conversation about African American Women, Trauma, and Resistance (Feb 3, 2022)

Newberry Library

In this installment of our “Conversations at the Newberry” series, scholars Tiya Miles and Megan Sweeney discuss how seemingly simple historical artifacts can reveal the ways that enslaved African American women exercised agency under horrifying constraints and found meaning and beauty amid pain.

Celebrating Harriet Powers and Quilt Stories (Dec 7, 2021)

An event to celebrate the life and work of Harriet Powers to view her works including her Bible quilt and Pictorial quilt, which are on display together for the first time in the exhibition “Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories” at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Speakers

• Bisa Butler, artist
• Kyra Hicks, author, quilter, and quilt historian
• Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, NEA Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow, United States Artists Fellow
• Dr. Tiya Miles, professor of History, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, Harvard University

Book Talk with Tiya Miles || Harvard Radcliffe Institute (July 20, 2021)

The second installment in the summer series of Virtual Radcliffe Book Talks features Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (Random House, 2021). Tiya’s reading is followed by a discussion with Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, professor of history in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and chair of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery.

Tiya is a Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, a professor of history in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, a University-wide effort anchored at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. This program is presented as part of the Presidential Initiative on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery.

History Café: Harriet Jacobs and the World of Abolitionist Cambridge Women (May 24, 2021)

“In our first History Café program of 2021, Dr. Tiya Miles discusses her work on the life of writer and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs. For the Spring 2021 semester at Harvard University, where she is Professor of History, Dr. Miles created a new course, “Abolitionist Women and Their Worlds.” Dr. Miles is joined in this program by her graduate teaching fellow, Alyssa Napier, and by two of her undergraduate students, Kyra March and Lilah Penner Brown, to talk about their experiences researching Jacobs’ time in Cambridge and her involvement with the movements for abolition and civil rights for Black Americans.”

All That She Carried Dr Tiya Miles hosted by Middleton Place (6/10/21)

“ALL THAT SHE CARRIED is a story about women, mothers and daughters, who chose the profundity of love over dehumanizing conditions. How much can one bag hold? Ashley’s Sack a rough cotton bag, given by an enslaved woman named Rose to her daughter, Ashley, before their forced separation, reveals one object’s capacity to hold onto history and to keep love for generations. Ashley’s granddaughter, Ruth, inherited the sack and embroidered it with just a handful of words that evoke her family’s sweeping story of loss and of love.

Building on Ruth’s words, Miles carefully unearths these women’s faint presence in archival records and draws on objects and art, to follow the paths of their lives—and the lives of so many women like them—in a singular and revelatory history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States.

But what makes Miles’s book revolutionary is that she shows us how these threadbare pieces of the historic record are vital TODAY as we stare down a difficult future. ALL THAT SHE CARRIED is not simply a history of dark times, as necessary as they as they are to confront, but about rediscovering the tools that Black women invented—tools to preserve and pass down love, tools to rescue stories, tools to hold onto the hope for a future against steep odds—as we look to create our own future, a future that includes facing things such as police brutality and climate change.”

Rising Sea Levels Threaten MBTA’s Blue Line’

“Rising Sea Levels Threaten MBTA’s Blue Line’“ — Tiya discusses her new book on Radio Boston (WBUR) with host Tiziana Dearing. June 2021.

The Forgotten Slavery of Our Ancestors

In the 12-minute film, The Forgotten Slavery of Our Ancestors, Tiya explains how the enslavement of Indigenous peoples became less visible as the enslavement of African people increased over time. The Forgotten Slavery of Our Ancestors features historians and scholars who offer a short introduction to the history of Indigenous enslavement on land that is now the United States. More information on this film and curriculum.

Black Feminist Ecological Perspectives (Mar 18, 2021)

The first webinar of CGSHR’s Spring 2021 Speaker Series, “Prospects for Sustainable Peace at the Nexus of Race, Gender, and the Climate Crisis” at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

“Black Women and the Nature of Fugitivity” — Tiya’s presentation

Early thinkers in the Black feminist literary tradition worked with the materiality and symbolism of nature to imagine as well as to enact free lives. Can their form of environmental consciousness, forged in the fires of slavery, speak to today’s existential threats?

Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery: Reckoning with the Past to Understand the Present (March 12, 2021)

The presidential initiative on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, anchored at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, is an effort to understand and address the enduring legacy of slavery within our University community. Our Radcliffe on the Road series (now virtual) will explore the charge of the initiative and the work under way to explore Harvard’s historical entanglements with slavery and its legacies, along with the initiative’s efforts to support student and community engagement.

Speakers include:

• Tomiko Brown-Nagin, chair of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute
• Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, and professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
• Tiya Miles, member of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and professor of history in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
• Martha Minow, member of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, former dean of Harvard Law School, and 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University

Politics and Prose: The Legacy of Literature (Nov 24, 2020)

Watson Senior Fellow ZZ Packer hosts a panel featuring Nicole Terez Dutton, writer and editor of Kenyon Review, Tiya Miles, Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and author and National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson.

This public panel is the culmination of the Watson Institute student study group hosted by ZZ Packer, The 1619 Project: Governing Narratives. With the essays and methodology of the New York Times’ 1619 Project as a starting point, the group has been exploring how certain political, historical and sociological narratives inform an American ethos and construct an American identity—sometimes at the expense of competing narratives.

The Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Racism in the North (Oct 2020)

Although Massachusetts formally abolished slavery in 1783, the visible and invisible presence of slavery continued in the Commonwealth and throughout New England well into the 19th century. Harvard professor Louis Agassiz’s theory about human origins is but one example of the continued presence and institutionalization of racism in the North. Taking as a starting point the new book To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes, this panel of experts will examine the role and impact of slavery in the North and discuss the influence of Agassiz and how Black abolitionists responded to scientific racism.

Harvard University Colloquium Series (Feb 19, 2020)

Harvard University Colloquium Series
“A Tattered Dress”: Reconstructing Enslaved Women’s Lives through Objects

Finding Common Ground 5 | Panel Discussion and Q & A (Feb 21, 2018)

Finding Common Ground focuses on the complex history of African Americans and Native Americans and how their intertwined stories have become an essential part of American identity. In this segment, symposium moderator Michel Martin and presenters Tiya and Paul Chaat Smith are joined by Kevin Gover, director of the National Museum of the American Indian, and Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in an engaging discussion of the symposium’s subject, and to answer questions submitted by the audience.

The Dawn of Detroit (Oct 6, 2017)

Recorded at her recent book launch at Source Booksellers in Detroit, MI, and previously aired live on C-SPAN, Tiya talks about her book The Dawn of Detroit, in which she examines the role that slavery played in the early history of Detroit.

Previously Aired on Oct 28, 2017 | 7:00pm EDT  and Oct 29, 2017 | 2:00pm EDT | C-SPAN 2

Environment Harvard Mahindra Environment Forum – I’ve Known Rivers: Slave Resistance and Environmental Consciousness (May 2017)

The Environment Forum at the Mahindra Center is convened by Robin Kelsey (Dean of Arts and Humanities, Harvard University) and Ian Jared Miller (Professor of History, Harvard University).

From Tarzan to Tonto 8 – Q & A (Feb 24, 2017)

University of Michigan Author’s Forum (Jan 2016)

Miles’ insight into the intimate dynamics of slavery at the crossroads of Native American and African American experience has won her professional accolades and an eager readership. In this sense, while The Cherokee Rose is fiction, it is no sharp departure. Miles builds upon what she had already taught us, including her exploration of Georgia’s Chief Vann House, to provide a new vantage point from which to explain the past.

– Martha Jones

Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (April 2012)

Tiya asks what did we really know about abolitionist Harriet Tubman. She questions Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, her 1869 biography. The author, Sarah H. Bradford, claims that the book is based on Tubman’s own narration. But how did Bradford interpret Tubman’s life? Was she true to Tubman’s words? Who was the intended audience? Learn more.