Format: Lecture followed by book signing with light refreshments. Literati Bookstore will sell copies of Professor Miles's book.

Abstract: Borrowing the words of Octavia E. Butler for theoretical inspiration, this talk engages in a thought experiment. What if we were to take Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous historical figures in the US, and center her in an environmental story? What would we learn about Tubman herself? What would we notice about Black women in the nineteenth century and the role of place and ecology in their survival? And what connections might we draw between Black women’s environmental thinking in the multi-temporal past and the greatest challenges facing our species in the murky present and future?

Biography: Tiya Miles is the author of seven books, including four prize-winning studies on the history of American slavery. Her works include the National Book Award winner, All That She Carried, The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake; Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation; The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits, and Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, among others. She has written prize-winning historical fiction: The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, shared her travels to "haunted" historic sites of slavery in a published lecture series, and written various articles and op-eds (in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, CNN.com, and more) on women’s history, history and memory, Black public culture, and Black and Indigenous interrelated experience. Miles’s forthcoming book, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, will be published by Penguin Press in June. Miles taught on the faculty of the University of Michigan for sixteen years and is currently the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg. Additional support from the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies.