“Stories in Stone: Memorialization, the Creation of History and the Role of Preservation” examines the story of the tombstone through a blend of object biography and micro-historical approaches and contrasts it with other memory projects, like the remembrance of the Civil War dead. Data from a regional survey of nineteenth-century cemeteries, historical accounts, literary sources, and the visual arts are woven together to explore the agentive relationships between monuments, their commissioners, their creators and their viewers and the ways in which memory is created and contested and how this impacts the history we learn and preserve.
Emily Williams has been an Associate Professor at Durham University since 2018, where she is in charge of the master’s program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Museum Objects. Prior to holding this position, she was the Senior Conservator for Archaeological Materials at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. She obtained a BA in Art History and History from Rice University, a MA in the Conservation of Archaeological Objects from Durham University, and a PhD in Archaeology and Ancient History from the University of Leicester. Emily Williams has also worked on sites and in museums in many countries, including Australia, Bermuda, Syria, and Turkey, and she has taught courses on conservation and collections care in Egypt and Malaysia.