At this year’s “After Dark” lecture at Decorah’s Porter House Museum, Dr. Lindsey Row-Heyveld presented  "How to Read a Graveyard: The Art of Phelps Cemetery" on Thursday October 17. 
Row-Heyveld, a scholar, educator, and calligrapher has long been fascinated with gravestones: the
stories they tell, the feelings they evoke, and the attitudes they convey toward death.
As an associate professor of English at Luther College, Row-Heyveld teaches courses on medieval and early modern English literature, Shakespeare, and disability studies. For her work as a calligraphy artist she won a 2024 Midwest Award for Artists with Disabilities. Among her recent lectures in Decorah, was “Tattoos, Medievalism, and White Supremacy,” in connection with the Vesterheim exhibit, “Tattoo: Identity Through Ink.” Row-Heyveld has recently grown interested in Decorah’s own graveyard art. In spring 2024, as part of her “Ghost Stories” class, she produced a series of podcasts interviewing students about their focus on a person buried in Phelps Cemetery.
The lecture will be given twice: at 6:00 and 7:30 at the Porter House Museum.