“I see teaching as a shared experience between the professor and her students – creating an environment where students, their varied identities and different viewpoints, are validated. I take pride in seeing the greatness in my students.”
Kami Fletcher
Associate ProfessorHistory
Dr. Kami Fletcher is an Associate Professor of African Diasporic History & Coordinator of Africana Studies. She teaches courses that center the African experience throughout the Diaspora unpacking social and cultural history all at the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality.
Her research centers on African American burial grounds, late 19th/early 20th century Black female and male undertakers, and contemporary Black grief and mourning. She is the co-editor of Grave History: Death, Race & Gender in Southern Cemeteries from Antebellum to the Post-Civil Rights Era (University of Georgia Press, 2023) and Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed (University of Mississippi Press, 2020) and a host of other articles and book chapters including “Black Women Undertakers of the Early Twentieth Century Were Hidden in Plain Sight (Meridians Journal, 2023) and “Are Enslaved African Americans Buried at Mount Harmon Plantation? Space and Reflection for National Mourning and Memorializing” (Mortality Journal, 2023).
Currently, Dr. Fletcher is working on a manuscript that historicizes African American death care workers in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest United States.
Publications
Books
Fletcher, Kami & Ashley Towle. Editors. Grave History: Death, Race & Gender in Southern Cemeteries from Antebellum to the Post-Civil Rights Era. University of Georgia Press, December 2023.
Amanik, Allan & Kami Fletcher. Editors. Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed. University Press of Mississippi, April 2020.
Fletcher, Kami. The Niagara Movement: The Black Protest Reborn. Saarbrucken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller, 2008.
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
Fletcher, Kami. “Black Women Undertakers of the Early Twentieth Century Were Hidden in Plain Sight” Meridians, 22, no. 2 (October 2023): 478-502.
Fletcher, Kami. “Are Enslaved African Americans Buried at Mount Harmon Plantation? Space and Reflection for National Mourning and Memorializing” Mortality, 28, issue 3 (2023): 510-525.
Fletcher, Kami. “African American Funeral Directors as Culture Keepers: An Interview with Karla Holloway” Mortality, 27, issue 4 (2022): 493-499.
Fletcher, Kami. “Real Business: Maryland’s First Black Cemetery Journey’s into the Enterprise of Death,
1807-1920.” Thanatological Studies, no. 7 (April 2015): 53-85.
Book Chapters
Fletcher, Kami. “Jim Crowing the Dead: A Fight for African American Burial Rights and Dismantling Racial Burial Covenants” In Grave History: Death, Race & Gender in Southern Cemeteries from Antebellum to the Post-Civil Rights Era edited by Kami Fletcher and Ashley Towle, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, December 2023.
Fletcher, Kami and Tamara Waraschinski “Between Cultural Necrophilia & African American Activism: Life & Loss in the Age of COVID” In Death, Grief and Loss in the Context of COVID-19 edited by Panagiotis Pentaris. Routledge, August 2021.
Fletcher, Kami. “Long Live Chill #LLC: Exploring Grief, Memorial & Ritual in African American R.I.P. T-shirt Culture.” In Beyond the Veil: Reflexive Study of Death and Dying, edited by Kalliopi Christoduoulaki and Aubrey Thamann, New York: Berghahn Books, May 2021.
Fletcher, Kami. “Founding Baltimore’s Mount Auburn Cemetery and Its Importance to Understanding African American Burial Rights.” In Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed. Edited by Allan Amanik and Kami Fletcher, Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, April 2020.
Fletcher, Kami. “When Did the n-word Become about Freedom of Speech? Understanding the Effects of When the n-word is Spoken in the classroom.” In Postcolonial Composition Pedagogy: Using the Culture of Marginalized Students to Teach Writing, edited by Monique Akassi, 267-76, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Robbie Dean Press, 2011.
Invited Talks
Invited Speaker for the 2024-2025 Distinguished Lecture Series. “Knowing Otherwise: Haunting, Conjuring, and Spectral Encounters.” Institute for Research on Women (IRW) at Rutgers-New Brunswick. January 30, 2025.
Invited Speaker for the Art of Dying Institute. Certificate in Death Counseling. African American Deathways & Death Work Workshop. April 21, 2024.
Keynote Speaker at the annual Pennsylvania Hallowed Grounds conference. “Rising Up Together To Preserve Hallowed Ground.” October 14, 2023.
Invited Speaker at the African American Symposium. Stratford Hall. Stratford, Virginia. May 20, 2023.
Invited Speaker for The Comparative Religion & Humanities Student Society. Chico State University. February 22, 2023.
Keynote Speaker at the 48th Annual Anthropology Visiting Lecture Series. University of Tennessee, Knoxville. October 18-19, 2022.
Keynote Speaker at the 2022 Death & Culture IV Conference. University of York. “Death is Not the Great Equalizer: African Americans and Their Fight Against Racism from Beyond the Grave”. September 8, 2022.
Invited Speaker to “Hard Histories at Hopkins” seminar series. Johns Hopkins University. “The Rise of the African American Undertaker & Funeral Directress in Baltimore, 1872-1920.” November 12, 2021.
Keynote Speaker at the “The Material Culture of Racial Justice and Healthcare Equity” seminar series. “Cemeteries and Death Work as Social Justice Activism.” University of North Carolina, Wilmington. November 5, 2021.
Invited Panelist to the Library of Virginia’s Book Talk: Death and Rebirth in a Southern City: Richmond’s Historic Cemeteries. September 23, 2021.
Keynote Speaker at the 2021 international conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal. “A Fight for Burial Rights: The Importance of Autonomous Black Burial Grounds Then and Now”. September 2, 2021.
Invited Speaker for the Community College of Baltimore County’s “Invisible History Program.” June 22, 2021.
Invited Speaker to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, “Freedom Through Death: Founding Baltimore’s Mount Auburn Cemetery”. Sponsored by the Department of Science, Technology, and Science. March 26, 2021.
Invited Speaker to Georgia Southern University, “Jim Crowing the Dead,” Sponsored by the Department of History, February 24, 2021.
Keynote speaker during Experience Event at Case Western Reserve University. “African American Deathways & Deathwork IS Social Justice Activism”. September 21, 2020.
Invited Speaker at “African American Cemeteries: Remembering, Reclaiming, Resisting” sponsored by the Friends of Geer Cemetery, Duke University’s Forum for Scholars and Publics, and the International Comparative Studies at Duke University in Durham, NC. November 2019.
Invited Speaker to Smith College, “Baltimore’s Mount Auburn Cemetery and the African American Funeral Directresses,” Northampton, MA. April 2019.
Academic or Professional Associations
National Council for Public History
Organization of American Historians
American Historical Association
The Association for the Study of Death and Society
Other Professional or Scholarly Activity
Co-Founder and President of the Collective for Radical Death Studies