The Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies hosted about 80 University of Michigan students and community members in the Michigan League Ballroom to hear Tiya Miles, Harvard University professor and author, discuss her research exploring the intersection between Harriet Tubman’s life and environmental storytelling Thursday evening. The lecture, titled “‘Species Insurance’: Harriet Tubman, Environmental Storytelling, and Historical Modes of Survival,” was the second installment of EIHS’s annual lecture series, which invites speakers to examine methodological, analytical and theoretical issues in history.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily prior to the event, EIHS director John Carson said EIHS invited Miles to this year’s lecture because she could engage a broader audience in discussion surrounding historical topics.
“Her work is both historically rigorous (and) it is high-level scholarship, but she also is able to write it in a very engaging style, both in her scholarship and novels,” Carson said. “I think she really is exactly the kind of person we’re looking for, (someone) that is thinking about how to bring historical studies and ways of thinking to large publics and to do it in an engaging way.”
In an email to The Daily, Miles wrote that she was excited to visit Ann Arbor to speak at the University and that environmental storytelling encourages readers to consider the impact the environment has had on human stories.
“I picked up the term from the founders of The Environmental Storytelling Studio at Brown University,” Miles wrote. “To me, it means writing about the intricate links between human experience and the environment in ways crafted to draw readers in and encourage attention to ecological meanings, issues, and stakes.”
Miles said she realized the importance of the environment in her research on Black history and wanted to explore environmental storytelling more.
“My way into environmental storytelling has been to start tracing genealogies of Black figures and actors in an ecological space and to characterize and also theorize their intellectual creative ethical and spiritual contributions towards survival,” Miles said. “My reasoning is that those who confronted the worst on these lands might be able to offer us the best inspiration and tools for survival.”
Miles spoke about the concept of “species insurance,” or the survival of humanity during her lecture. Miles said the idea was created by Octavia Butler when she wrote the Parable series, which is set in a society devastated by climate change.
“Butler, who had just written two novels about political, environmental and social plans that were so terrifying … was reaching for a way to offer hope,” Miles said. “And her way was this notion of some kind of species insurance is a way that we can protect and ensure ourselves against the worst possibilities.”
Miles spoke about her experiences studying the writing of Tubman, known for her work aiding people who had escaped slavery in traveling safely to the North during the Civil War. Miles said she noticed more details about the natural world in Tubman’s writings, such as a comparative analogy with weeds.
“The only thing that makes a weed a weed is that humans don’t want them growing where they are, and Tubman’s reference to the weed seems to point to the fact that she knew she wasn’t wanted,” Miles said. “She knew that she wasn’t supposed to be where she was. And yet, she kept on growing. She kept coming back to help other people escape, just like a weed.”
Miles said the sweet gum tree is also an important symbol in Tubman’s story. Miles described the tree as being two-sided, considering that Tubman’s cradle was built from the tree, but the sweet gum tree’s seed pods often proved an obstacle for enslaved people running away.
“Nature could be a place of respite … (but) the seed pods of this very safe sweetgum tree were actually quite dangerous,” Miles said. “They were really prickly and hard, and enslaved people who were trying to run away could step on these and injure themselves. So the sweet gum tree has two sides to it, as does Tubman’s experience in the natural world.”
Miles said Tubman’s relationship with nature underscored her recounting of her escape to Philadelphia.
“She said that she followed the North Star and when she finally crossed the border, she is quoted (saying) ‘I was free. There was such glory for everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees and I felt like I was in heaven,’” Miles said. “The first time I read that many years ago, I didn’t see all the references to nature, but now of course I see it.”
Miles concluded her lecture by discussing the complicated relationship between women who were enslaved and the physical environment.
“Tubman was among the many subjugated populations in this nation that intimately interacted with ravaged lands as victims and agentic participants,” Miles said. “African American women inflicted damage on the earth as part of an exploited labor force. Yet they found in the same stretches of tender maintenance a rare Earth element: hope.”
LSA sophomore Sara DeSmet attended the lecture and told The Daily she found it fascinating to look at Black history through an environmental lens.
“I thought it was really interesting how (Miles) took her interest in early American history in the 18th century and turned it into environmental history,” Desmet said. “It’s definitely something I’ll think about more and how she can interpret quotes in different ways depending on how you’re looking at them.”
Daily Staff Reporter Eilene Koo can be reached at ekoo@umich.edu.