Richmond Cemetery Collaboratory Courses

In 2017, faculty from UR and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), along with members of the Friends of East End, formed the East End Cemetery Collaboratory which centered around East End Cemetery, an historic African American burial ground in Henrico County and the City of Richmond.

The renamed Richmond Cemetery Collaboratory has since expanded its focus to other African American cemeteries in our region and aims to produce place-based knowledge that contributes to a community dialogue about our collective past.

 

Courses

University of Richmond

  • Biology 202: Integrated Biological Principles II
  • Biology 336: Eco-epidemiology
  • Classics 220: Introduction to Archaeology
  • Dance 319: Collaborative Arts Lab: Dance, Humanities, and Technology
  • First-Year Seminar: Death and Commemoration in Antiquity
  • First-Year Seminar: Representing Civil Rights in Richmond
  • First-Year Seminar: Why Do We Build?
  • Religion 358/American Studies 381: Richmond: City of the Dead

VCU

  • History 201: The Art of Historical Detection
  • History 490: Richmond Cemeteries
  • History 653: American Material Culture
  • Sociology 391: Aging and the Life Course
  • Sociology 445: Medical Sociology
  • University College 112: Focused Inquiry

Projects

Years in the making, the Collaboratory's online map of East End Cemetery pinpoints the locations of grave markers using GIS technology and drone imagery. The map is updated as new markers are uncovered.

East End Cemetery RVA, a website created by Brian Palmer, Erin Hollaway Palmer, and Jolene Smith, features photographs made at East End, as well as archival images from public-domain sources and from relatives of the deceased; primary documents about the cemetery and the people buried there; and narratives created from these materials. The site is also designed to accept content from user photos, documents, stories.

The Friends of East End and other cemetery volunteers post photographs of grave markers found at East End on Find A Grave. Using death certificates and obituaries, they also create memorials for people whose markers have not yet been found. It is estimated that upwards of 15,000 people are buried at East End. As of spring 2020, more than 3,600 burials have been documented on Find A Grave.

Header image by Brian Palmer