By Katrina Scalise (COM’25)
Each Wednesday of fall semester, students in the Department of Art & Architecture “Medievalism & the Mount Auburn Cemetery” course travel across the Charles River and four miles west to meet in their outdoor classroom on the Cambridge/ Watertown line: a historic cemetery with picturesque landscaping, notable gravesites, and a significant collection of monuments.
There, they examine the iconography of tombstones, explore the various architectural styles of monuments, deliberate over the meaning of gravestone texts, and compare anthropological themes to the artwork they observe, while also discussing ideas for potential research projects.
“We ask big questions like: How do you want to commemorate the dead and why? How do you mourn? The fact that in so many religions, the dread of separation from the people you love is at the root of prayer,” said Associate Professor of Medieval Art Deborah Kahn, the inaugural teacher of the new course. “One of the parts of the course that is really exciting is that we can deal with monuments — we are art historians after all — but we can also deal with these very profound life questions and that is what we will do at the end.”
Founded in 1831 a green space for the bereaved to commemorate loved ones and for residents of Boston to escape city life, Mount Auburn Cemetery was the country’s first large-scale designed landscape open to the public. It is filled with gently curving avenues and pathways, with memorials placed amidst hills, trees, and ponds, providing an ideal space for undergraduate and graduate students to explore anthropology, art history, and religion in a unique setting.
The class was designed to expose students to meaningful opportunities for contemplation, discovery, and original research. “The chief emphasis is on commemoration, the appropriation of artistic styles, the historical development of the landscape and on monuments by some of the preeminent European and American sculptors of the nineteenth century,” said Cynthia Becker, Professor of African Studies and HAA, and Chair of the HAA Department.
Kahn is familiar with the cemetery, having grown up in the area. She attended the nearby Shady Hill School, and would often take walks on the grounds with her parents. She is now working on a book about Mount Auburn, focusing on commemorative monuments and artistic appropriation, which Kahn emphasizes to her students as important art history topics within the cemetery.
“I also used to come here with my father who was a doctor at Harvard Medical School, and, with him, it was always a learning experience. I had this very distinct feeling that everybody responds to this place. I’m not yet an expert on Mount Auburn Cemetery, but I am an expert on the emotions that are associated with this place.”
Each visit, students arrive at Mount Auburn by their own means, completing readings about that week’s topic ahead of time. Once there, Professor Kahn guided students to carefully chosen sites, related to different architectural and art history themes for students to observe and discuss. After the professor’s guided, theme-focused cemetery tour for the day and dedicated discussion time, students are given the opportunity to explore the cemetery and take notes on topics related to their own interests.
Keeghan Bauer (CAS`24), a History of Art and Architecture major in Kahn’s fall semester section of the course, noted the importance of the out-of-classroom experience, “Just actually being able to see what we’re learning about and being physically present in the space because this class would not work if we weren’t actually coming here,” she said. “It wouldn’t make any sense.”
Iana Nikorich (CAS`24), a double major in Architectural studies and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, said she enjoyed, “learning about topics you wouldn’t normally touch upon in a regular course at BU… [cemeteries] are not something we discuss in our courses although it is a big architectural topic so that’s been very fun.”
“[The course], it’s tailored to all of our individual interests as well so we’re not just learning based on a set curriculum,” said Victoria Hatchel, a graduate student in the program. “If you’re interested in the history of the cemetery or in the medieval monuments, it’s shaped to what we like.”
For example, Hatchel completed her reading assignment of the cemetery’s 1831 consecration speech at the cemetery’s Consecration Dell, which dedicated the cemetery with 2,000 graves in the surrounding area.
“I realized sitting in my apartment at my computer reading this speech wouldn’t give me the same impact as reading it where [the speech] actually happened,” Hatchell said. “In the speech the speaker talks about some of the different trees around and I was like, ‘Oh, those are those trees.’”
At the midpoint of one class, students discussed ideas for their independent research papers, with topics ranging from overcrowding in urban cemeteries, transcendentalism, childhood burials, the feminization and beautification of death, the iconography of dogs, wheat and other nature symbols on tombs, and comparisons to other old cemeteries such as Père Lachaise in Paris. Undergrad and grad students excitedly volunteered potential sources and subtopics for their peers to explore in their papers..
“They teach themselves, that’s the experiential learning,” Kahn said, during the students’ brainstorming session. “You can’t get this in a classroom.”
At the end of the course, students’ last assignment touches upon the natural cycle of life and death. Students are tasked with picking out an acorn at the cemetery, and propagating it in a location of their choice.
“That’s what the founders would have wanted, it’s a different kind of education,” Kahn said.