Tiya Miles is Assistant Professor of American Culture, Afroamerican and African Studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Ties that Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom.

Sharon P. Holland is Associate Professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity, also published by Duke University Press.