Miller, Ivor

Dr. Ivor L. Miller is a cultural historian specializing in the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and the Americas. He is a graduate of Hampshire College (B.A., 1985), Yale University (M.A., African American Studies) and Northwestern University (Ph.D, 1995). He has been a Scholar in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, at the Institute for Research in the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC) at the City College of New York, a Visiting Professor at the Center for Black Diaspora at DePaul University, a Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria (2009-2011), and a Senior Fellow at the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution (2011-2012). Dr. Miller was a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College in 2002. His 1995 doctoral dissertation was a study of the Santería religion in Cuban society and its influences in the U.S. He has traveled extensively in West Africa, South America and the Caribbean, particularly in Cuba, where he did research from 1991-2013, conducting interviews, recording video and taking photographs. In addition to numerous articles in scholarly journals, Dr. Miller's publications include Ifá Will Mend Our Broken World: Thoughts on Yorùbá Religion and Culture in Africa and the Diaspora with Dr. Wande Abimbola (AIM, 1997), Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City (University Press of Mississippi, 2002), and Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba (University Press of Mississippi, 2009).

From the guide to the Ivor L. Miller Papers, 1900-2005, 1990-2005, (Amherst College Archives and Special Collections)