Samford University communication and media professor Niya Pickett Miller edited and contributed to the new book Sustaining Black Music and Culture During COVID-19, a collection of essays and studies by 12 scholars from various university communication and media programs. The works are united by their exploration of the communicative and Black cultural significance of the Instagram Live events, Club Quarantine (CQ) and Verzuz battles during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The book argues that Instagram is a premier digital leisure space to celebrate and promote Black American culture and identity, particularly evidenced during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as the United States grappled with mandated shelter-in-place orders,” Miller said. “CQ and Verzuz emerged as highly successful Black music-listening events streamed via Instagram Live. They collectively provided respite from social isolation and rearticulated space for Black culture engagement,  all while ushering Black (techno)culture through a once-in-a-generation pandemic and beyond.”

Miller's scholarship is centered on visual rhetorical criticism of marginal identities, and that work earned her the 2019 Alabama Communication Association top faculty paper award.