Detroit: Then and Now
October 15, 2012, State Room East, Indiana Memorial Union

Is Detroit a potentially fruitful test case of postindustrial urbanism or a frightening cautionary tale? Can community members and their academic partners find ways to build constructive change on the ground? This presentation explores the notion that the challenges Detroit faces in the present may hold similarities to the challenges the settlement confronted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when recently incorporated Detroit was a new kind of place within the American geopolitical landscape. Through a reconstruction of Detroit in its early decades, this presentation considers the question of whether understanding Detroit then can help to shape visionary thinking and action for Detroit now.

Tiya Miles is Professor in the Program in American Culture, Center for Afro-American and African Studies, Department of History, and Native American Studies Program at the University of Michigan. In 2011 she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" Fellowship. Her research interests include African American and Native American interrelated and comparative histories and literatures; African American women’s history; American culture; and the histories, feminist theories, and life experiences of women of color in the United States. She is the author of two award winning books: The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story (2010) and Ties that Bind: the Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom (2005). Her visit was co-sponsored by African American & African Diaspora Studies.