James A. Miller

My work focuses on twentieth century African American cultural politics, including explorations of literature, film, and music. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the works of Richard Wright and, since that time, I have had a long-standing interest in the relationship between social and political movements and African American cultural production. I have written extensively about individual African American writers, about film, and about African American music.

My recent book, Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial follows the trajectory of the notorious case and its aftermath as it circulated in fiction, poetry, drama, and film, from the 1930s until recent times.

My current research examines the interactions between African American and South African jazz musicians between 1959 and 1965, as the pace of freedom struggles in both countries began to rapidly escalate.

I work with graduate students at several levels in their programs. My graduate seminars tend to be organized around archival research at the Library of Congress and Howard University’s Moorland Spingarn Research Center and, under the rubric, “Twentieth Century,” challenge students to rethink received knowledge about African American literary and cultural history. In recent years I have offered research seminars on “The Harlem Renaissance,” “The Pre-Renaissance: African American Writing, 1890-1919,” and “The Black Arts Movement.” I also periodically offer reading seminars, such as “Haiti and the North American Literary Imagination” and “Race, Slavery, and 20th Century American Fiction.”

I have directed or served on the committee of the following recent dissertations:

“Rites of Identity and Stages of Postcolonial Consciousness in Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ayi Kwei Armah’s Fragments" (Howard University)

“’Let it Be Really New’: The Early New Masses and Nativist Discourse”

“Flight to San Francisco: Bay Area Literature and Multiculturalism”

“’No Deed But Memory’: Slavery in the American Cultural Imagination”

“’You Factory Folks Who Sing This Song Will Surely Understand’: Cultural Representations in the Gastonia Novels of Myra Page, Grace Lumpkin and Olive Dargan”

“Performative Politics in Chicago: The Black Arts Movement, Women Writers, and Visions of Nation and Identity”

“Mob Stories: Race, Nation and Narratives of Racial Violence”

Link to Prof. Miller's CV