Grave

Allison C. Meier (writer, Freelance writer, New York City, USA)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic USA
23 March 2023

Literary theory; Sociology: customs & traditions; Sociology: death & dying; Urban & municipal planning

Series: Object Lessons

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Grave takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change. As a cemetery tour guide, Allison C. Meier has spent more time walking among tombstones than most. Even for her, the grave has largely been invisible, an out of the way and unobtrusive marker of death. However, graves turn out to be not always so subtle, reverent, or permanent.

While the indigent and unidentified have frequently been interred in mass graves, a fate brought into the public eye during the COVID-19 pandemic, the practice today is not unlike burials in the potter’s fields of the colonial era. Burial is not the only option, of course, and Meier analyzes the rise of

cremation, green burial, and new practices like human composting, investigating what is next for the grave and how existing spaces of death can be returned to community life.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

By: Allison C. Meier (writer Freelance writer New York City USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic USA
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 165mm, Width: 121mm,
ISBN: 9781501383656
ISBN 10: 1501383655
Series: Object Lessons
Pages: 168
Publication Date: 23 March 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. The Grave: Our House of Eternity 2. Navigating Through Necrogeography 3. The Living and the Dead 4. The Privilege of Permanence 5. An Eternal Room of Our Own 6. No Resting Place 7. To Decay or Not to Decay 8. New Ideas for the Afterlife 9. Dead Space Notes Index

Allison C. Meier is a writer and researcher based in New York City, USA. Her writing on visual culture, history, architecture has appeared in the New York Times, Curbed, Lapham’s Quarterly, CityLab, Narratively, Mental Floss, Smithsonian, New Inquiry, Slate, Urban Omnibus, Fine Books, Artsy, and others. She moonlights as a cemetery tour guide at New York burial grounds and is a licensed New York City sightseeing guide. Previously, she was a staff writer at Hyperallergic and a senior editor at Atlas Obscura.

Reviews for Grave

Beautifully written and filled with empathy and insight, Grave is a rumination over the how and why of human burial, complete with a slew of little known historical tidbits pulled together from years of the author's fascination with the topic. It should be considered essential reading for anyone interested in funerary history, especially in the United States. * Paul Koudounaris, author of Heavenly Bodies, Memento Mori, and Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses *