From WKNC 88.1 Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor Dr. Jason Miller is renowned for his research on, and discoveries about, Langston Hughes, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Nina Simone. Of particular note is his discovery of the first ever recording of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In this episode, Dr. Miller discusses his unconventional path to becoming a professor, his research, and his research process. I really enjoyed this conversation and gettin

A Conversation with Jason Miller By Tony Bolden University of Kansas College of Liberal Arts and Sciences This interview presents Jason Miller’s research on the friendship between Langston Hughes and Nina Simone, who was known as the High Priestess of Soul. As a Hughes scholar, Miller combines his knowledge of Hughes with painstaking biographical research on Simone. In this way, he demonstrates how Hughes is connected to soul. Miller traces their friendship to Simone’s active

By Chris Saunders From NC State Magazine It doesn’t take long talking to NC State English professor Jason Miller to understand that for him, everything begins and ends with 20th century American poet Langston Hughes. “I was drawn to Hughes’ accessibility,” Miller says of a leader of the Harlem Renaissance movement in the 1920s and ’30s. “Here is somebody with some profound thoughts that aren’t very nuanced or so ambiguous that they’re really hard to tease out.” Read More...

By Thomas Calder From Mountain XPress When a Raleigh-based audience gasped inside Quail Ridge Books, author W. Jason Miller realized he’d unintentionally discovered his next research topic, ultimately leading him to Western North Carolina. At the time, Miller, a professor of literature at N.C. State University, was celebrating the February 2020 release of his latest work, Langston Hughes , a biography written for the University of Chicago Press’ Critical Lives series. Read M

From Mountain Xpress by Thomas Calder POET AND SINGER: In 1949, poet Langston Hughes, right, spoke at Allen High School in Asheville. One of the students in attendance was Eunice Waymon, later known professionally as Nina Simone. In time, the poet and the singer developed a unique friendship, which author and N.C. State University professor W. Jason Miller is currently documenting in an online archive, Backlash Blues: Nina Simone and Langston Hughes. Photo of Simone courtesy