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Assignment for your first paper:
Compare the gravestones carved in late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century New England with the wooden chests made in the same time and place.
In class and on field trips we have observed that the gravestones carved in early New England share distinctive design elements in any given period. On our field trip to the RISD Museum we will see that contemporaneous objects made in wood also are decorated. It may be just coincidental, but knowing what we know about Puritan culture in early New England, we also might recognize the same ideas being expressed in different media.
The purpose of this exercise is to see if, in the words of Robert St. George, whose essay "Style and Structure in Joinery" you have read in preparation for this visit, these artifacts can be recognized as manifestations of a shared mental structure. Please report your conclusions in a 3-5 pp paper (5-7 pp for graduate students) due in class on October 11.
Assignment for your second paper:
Describe some aspect or feature of the Swan Point Cemetery you observed during your visit and comment on why it is appropriate to the idea of the Rural Cemetery Movement. You may want to emphasize the significance of this feature by contrasting it with your experience in an eighteenth-century graveyard or churchyard.
Please report your observations in a 3-5 pp paper due in class on Tuesday, November 13.
Final Projects:
During the second half of this course, students will undertake original research on some aspect of gravestone studies. The topic will be of your own choosing, in consultation with the instructor, and can reflect and build on an interest from your other coursework or personal experience. The dozens of papers in the eighteen volumes of Markers: The Annual Journal of the Association for Gravestone Studies on reserve in the Rockefeller Library are a good starting point for ideas. In addition, some other suggested topics include:
- comparing a RI cemetery with a cemetery from some other place
- a demographic explication of a burying ground
- a correlation of gravestone design and the design of contemporary artifacts
- a comparison of Yankee gravestones to those of another ethnic group
- single stones marking the graves of two or more people
- how women were memorialized on 19th century gravestones
- how references to women on gravestones changes over the course of the 18th c
- figurative sculpture in cemeteries
- Providence¹s earliest gravestones
- the hierarchy of spouses¹ graves in sequential marriages
- pet cemeteries
- a study of the gravestones of one family
- a stylistic analysis of the gravestones of one burying ground
- a group of epitaphs and how they reflect a time or place or people
- occupations found mentioned on gravestones
- which gravestones mention causes of death
- armorial designs on gravestones
- the eighteenth-century gravestones at Newport¹s Touro synagogue
- Irish immigrant gravestones
- comparing the gravestones of the northern and southern colonies
- a demographic study of portrait stones: who got them and when?
- typography of early printing versus stone lettering
- changing attitudes towards children
- formal architecture in graveyard
- the graves of Civil War veterans
- analyzing the occurrence of a certain symbol in a graveyard
- analysis of makers through written documents
- what happens when graves are moved
The idea is for you to go out into the field and make your own observations and draw your own conclusions about these artifacts. Please set your topic and describe your research proposal in a written paragraph to be handed in on November 6. Your final papers should be the equivalent of the 15 pp research papers you are preparing for other classes, though the length may vary with the amount of illustration you include or the amount of text you quote. This project is assigned in lieu of a final examination. The completed paper is due no later than December 14.