Cemetery Citizens

Adam Rosenblatt is Associate Professor of the Practice in International Comparative Studies and Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. He is the author of Digging for the Disappeared: Forensic Science after Atrocity (2015).

"Cemetery Citizens is timely and beautifully written. Rosenblatt challenges the death phobic living to face fears and embrace a civic duty to the dead. Not only does he force the living to reckon with the systemic oppression that left African American cemeteries unprotected and unmaintained but also convincingly argues how eco-friendly, anti-racist death care labor makes us thoughtful cemetery citizens."—Kami Fletcher, Albright College, co-founder of the Collective for Radical Death Studies "Rosenblatt's book brings us up close and personal and into the beauty, yes beauty of these spaces, as well as the everyday lives of people, families, and communities focused on gravesite restoration. A fascinating view from an active participant in the reclamation of institutionally neglected and historically marginalized cemeteries. An important read for anyone interested in place-making, ancestry, preservation, American history, and Black cemeteries as sites of knowledge and public engagement."—Antoinette T. Jackson, University of South Florida, founder and director of The Black Cemetery Network "In graveyards where roots entangle the remains of the dead, 'cemetery citizens' work to clear the land and reclaim the memory of the marginalized who are buried there. Armed with shovels and rakes, this labor entails 'scrappy care,' but it is also driven by desires and politics of multiple kinds. Going literally into the weeds of this work 'revising' the past, Rosenblatt unearths the complex terrain at three African American cemeteries undergoing restoration. As analytically powerful as it is poetically ethnographic, Cemetery Citizens is stunningly profound in addressing how relations with the dead can be both remade and re-broken."—Anne Allison, author of Being Dead Otherwise "Rosenblatt's work on Cemetery Citizens profoundly shifted my perspective, not only about African American cemeteries but about all such resting places, including those in my own community. I now understand that cemeteries are more than grounds of repose; they are vital links that connect familial, historical, and cultural threads across generations."—Marc Friedman, Black Books Black Minds "Cemetery Citizens is an exquisitely written, accessible, and unique contribution to a mounting literature on social justice, advocacy, and death—a must-read for any taphophile or would-be cemetery citizen."—Kaylee P. Alexander, Mortality "[Cemetery Citizens] is an important contribution to the growing field of cemetery studies, and it moves the conversation in a new and significant direction. The volume is illustrated with Rosenblatt's poems and sketches. Recommended."—R. F. Veit, CHOICE "Rosenblatt's book enriches and complicates our understanding of America's burial places and centers the cemetery citizen as an active participant in the critical and complex social justice work aimed at revising or rehabilitating these important places." —Richard Veit, American Ethnologist