Dr. Fletcher is an Associate Professor of American & African American History at Albright College. Her newest course entitled “African American Deathways and Deathwork” examines African American norms and ideas surrounding death as well as encourages students to see how death intersects with race, class, gender, religion, region. She is the author of “Real Business: Maryland’s First Black Cemetery Journey’s into the Enterprise of Death, 1807-1920”. She is also the co-author of the forthcoming volume Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed (University Press of Mississippi, March 2020). Currently, Dr. Fletcher is working on two manuscripts: The first, co-authored is First 100 Years of Black Undertaking in Baltimore. The second is a co-edited volume, Southern Cemeteries, Imprints of Southern Culture.

X: @kamifletcher36

Dr. Smith is Senior Professor of History at Lindenwood University in the St. Louis area, and editor of The Confluence, a regional studies journal in a magazine format. Smith is author of The Rural Cemetery Movement: Places of Paradox in Nineteenth-Century America. Most recently, he was a contributor to Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed (“Till Death Keeps Us Apart: Segregated Cemeteries and Social Values in St. Louis, Missouri”) and in the forthcoming Monuments, Memory, and Commemoration (“Cemeteries and the Lost Cause”) and Southern Cemeteries, Imprints of Southern Culture (“Confederates in the Graveyard: Southern Identity and the Rural Cemetery Movement”).

Ben Schaefer completed his PhD (2025) in Biological Anthropology with a focus in Molecular Bioarchaeology at Univ. Of Illinois at Chicago and The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL. His research focuses on reconstructing the socially embodied lived experiences from archaeological hormones embedded in the hair of child sacrifices at Huanchaquito Las Llamas, Peru. Ben is excited to support the CRDS with public outreach, community engagement, and programming! Aside from Academia, Ben spends a great deal of time designing digital illustrations - some of which have been included in art shows across the United States.