ABOUT ME
Introduction
Elise Madeleine Ciregna, PhD, is a historian specializing in social, visual, and material culture. She has a master’s degree in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University;
her master’s thesis was an exploration of the role of Mount Auburn Cemetery in the development of an American school of neoclassical sculpture. Dr. Ciregna earned her doctorate in history from the University of Delaware; her dissertation is entitled “The Lustrous Stone: White Marble in America, 1780-1860.”
She has worked as a historic cemetery curator and director; has been editor of a scholarly journal on gravestones and cemeteries; has taught courses at the University of Delaware, the Wentworth Institute, and Harvard Extension School; has lectured at Brown University; and has led workshops at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. Dr. Ciregna is the former President of the Association for Gravestone Studies, the leading organization in America for cemetery studies. Currently, she is a senior administrator in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and teaches courses there on scholarly writing, research methodologies, and cultural heritage protection, and for Atlas Obscura, she offers courses on gravestones, the cemetery industry, and the material culture of death.
