Corey J. Miles is an ethnographer of the U.S. South. His mama lived and died there.

She did both in simple and complicated ways. His research interest is a commitment to

her. It manifests in examining how southern Black people produce a thing we might call

home in spaces that are hostile to them. Sociologists often call this placemaking. As a

scholar who was raised by black women and trap music and trained as a sociologist, he

uses the quiet and loud pieces of southern Black performance as an entry point into

understanding the current unfolding of the U.S. South.