Taught online via Zoom
Sundays, August 4 - 25, 2024
5 - 7 pm EST (NYC time)
$125 Paid Patreon Members / $145 General Admission

Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time.

Every tombstone tells a story of the departed, from how they lived to how they died. Symbolism has been used in graves for centuries, from the ouroboros snake eating its own tail evoking the cyclical nature of time on the tomb of Tutankhamun in ancient Egypt to handshakes on steles in ancient Greece, representing an unbroken bond the living and the dead. 

In this class, led by writer and cemetery tour guide Allison C. Meier, you will learn how to decipher and understand cemetery symbolism in a graveyard near you, whether it's an atmospheric colonial churchyard or a Victorian landscape filled with soaring angels. We will explore some of the most common cemetery symbols and what they mean, as well as rarer iconography that has emerged around the world. 

The three sessions of the class will each cover a different era of cemetery symbolism and how it evolved from the visual expression that came before. Each session will include recommended reading and a prompt for exploring symbolism on your own, perhaps to consider what message you might like to leave behind as a final statement:

• Ancient Rites: The early beliefs about the dead that shaped our memorial rituals

• Memento Mori: How the churchyard became a landscape of the macabre

• Death Is Not the End: The Victorian symbolism of the 19th century, from floral meaning to signs of transition

• Art of the Afterlife: A look at modern and contemporary memorials that transmit new ideas about what a grave can be

Allison C Meier is the author of Grave (2023, Bloomsbury) and regularly writes about culture and its intersections with death, with articles in publications including the New York Times, CityLab, Wellcome Collection, Lapham's Quarterly, Hyperallergic, the Art Newspaper, and Curbed. She is the editor of Fine Books & Collections magazine and regularly publishes zines on cemetery-related topics. She has led cemetery walks at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, and other New York City area burial grounds.