Lyra Monteiro

URGENT:
We may be facing an illegal eviction. It's a Saturday night and we've only just found out.

If you know a housing attorney in NYC, who we could speak to re: the situation before Monday, please lmk, or send them my email lyra.d.monteiro at gmail (DM for my phone number).

Letters to the Editor | Sept. 2, 2025 Inquirer readers on the Mütter Museum and the Hanwha shipyard in South Philadelphia.

@mxabdulaliy.bsky.social and I wrote a letter to the editor which ran in @inquirer.com today re: the Mütter Museum’s horrifyingly regressive new Human Remains Policy.

The Mütter Museum needs to close.

#FindingCeremony

web.archive.org/web/20250902...

It's an embarrassment to Philly.

Letters to the Editor | Sept. 2, 2025 Inquirer readers on the Mütter Museum and the Hanwha shipyard in South Philadelphia.

@mxabdulaliy.bsky.social and I wrote a letter to the editor which ran in @inquirer.com today re: the Mütter Museum’s horrifyingly regressive new Human Remains Policy.

The Mütter Museum needs to close.

#FindingCeremony

web.archive.org/web/20250902...

I think if Britain colonised your country of origin you should get free BBC iplayer.

"The issue isn't whether we should or shouldn't exhibit human remains, but rather can we do so in a way that does justice to these individuals."- Sara Ray, director IE

No, you can't do so! Because in the end, you're still displaying their stolen bones! So whose version of justice is this?

Well said.

This is less of a human remains policy and more of a "we'll add more label text admitting that the bones were stolen in the first place."

Finding Ceremony for Ancestors Held in the Penn Museum and Other Colonial Institutions An anthropologist and an organizer try to connect descendant communities with the remains of 20 Black Philadelphians slated for court-ordered burial.

If you're writing a syllabus in anthropology, public history/humanities, museum studies, etc., please consider these pieces about #FindingCeremony:

1. This short intro which I co-authored with Finding Ceremony's Co-Convener, @mxabdulaliy.bsky.social in @SAPIENS_org: www.sapiens.org/biology/find...

How a Trump Executive Order Aims to Set White Supremacy in Stone In the recent tumult many seem to have missed how a recent executive order on “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” looks to enshrine the success of the 2017 “Unite the Right” in Charlottes...

For classicists, historians, and others concerned with the politics of the past, here are links for my work on American whyte supremacy and ancient Greece and Rome that are frequently taught:

1. This January 2021 @hyperallergic.com op ed:

hyperallergic.com/614175/how-a...

Syllabus material for Fall 2025 (and beyond!)

Power Structures: White Columns, White Marble, White Supremacy As I write these words on the fire escape of my Manhattan apartment, in early September, 2020, the flashing lights of a cop car blink in…

2. This 2020 Medium post adapted from a chapter of my 2012 PhD dissertation, titled: "Power Structures: White Columns, White Marble, White Supremacy"

intersectionist.medium.com/american-pow...

How a Trump Executive Order Aims to Set White Supremacy in Stone In the recent tumult many seem to have missed how a recent executive order on “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” looks to enshrine the success of the 2017 “Unite the Right” in Charlottes...

For classicists, historians, and others concerned with the politics of the past, here are links for my work on American whyte supremacy and ancient Greece and Rome that are frequently taught:

1. This January 2021 @hyperallergic.com op ed:

hyperallergic.com/614175/how-a...

My Co-Convener, aAliy Muhammad, and I are available for keynotes/talks for an appropriate fee.

If you're interested in inviting us to speak about #FindingCeremony at your institution, organization, or conference, you can reach us at: lyra.d.monteiro at gmail.

It's not the same thing for an academic to speak to students about her work with minimal compensation, as it is to ask a community member to revisit trauma under those circumstances.

With that in mind:

Both pieces work well in undergrad and grad courses.
I'm available to guest lecture in any class where #FindingCeremony's work is on the syllabus taught, for your institution's standard honorarium--DM me or email lyra.d.monteiro at gmail to schedule this.

2. "Open access violence: Legacies of white supremacist data making at the Penn Museum, from the Morton Cranial Collection to the MOVE remains," a longer journal article that I published in the International Journal of Cultural Property: doi.org/10.1017/S094...

Finding Ceremony for Ancestors Held in the Penn Museum and Other Colonial Institutions An anthropologist and an organizer try to connect descendant communities with the remains of 20 Black Philadelphians slated for court-ordered burial.

If you're writing a syllabus in anthropology, public history/humanities, museum studies, etc., please consider these pieces about #FindingCeremony:

1. This short intro which I co-authored with Finding Ceremony's Co-Convener, @mxabdulaliy.bsky.social in @SAPIENS_org: www.sapiens.org/biology/find...

Relatedly: exactly a week before
Rosa’s story is published, the museum hosts a “skull drawing workshop” with remains not currently on display:

Meanwhile, from the museum’s own social media (their thread includes images of human remains):

Two babies’ skulls found at Mütter Museum linked to Gallitzin, Pa., murder mystery from 1980 The world believed the five infants found in Stella Williamson's attic had been put to rest. Decades later, the truth is still unfolding.

No paywall: web.archive.org/web/20250729...

CW: more theft of human remains by a Philly museum + medical examiner in the 1980s.

Tell me again why it’s ok for this museum to exist.

And if they go public with this, think about what isn’t being shared—maybe isn’t even known yet, by current leadership.

#FindingCeremony

they got thesw skulls in 1999??? y'all, just play the recording of me last the mütter town hall meeting at the next one. just play it on loop until the end of time and all the stolen bones are laid to rest

Do you hear this, Mütter Museum???

That’s a relief, ty for telling me! It’s unfortunate the caption doesn’t make that clear.

Thanks for capturing so clearly the situation at the museum—most of the media coverage this past year has compounded the violence of the museum’s staff & fans by leaning into sensationalism.

Thanks for recommending! Just to clarify, there are no images of human remains accompanying the piece; the photos are of wax or plaster models. (But they look close enough that the warning is appropriate!)

TW: link has images of human remains

Excellent piece in today's @newyorker.com by @rachelmonroe.bsky.social re: Philadelphia's Mutter Museum.
No coincidence it's in the same city that was home to Samuel George Morton & is home to the Penn Museum.
#FindingCeremony

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Thanks so much for writing this piece, Megan!

Remembering ‘MOVE' as American religion on the 40th anniversary of Philadelphia bombing its own residents Forty years ago today, the city of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on itself. The city of Philadelphia let that fire burn for more than a day while firetrucks and firefighters stood watching the flames d...

With thanks to @mxabdulaliy.bsky.social, @intersectionist.bsky.social, @geedee215.bsky.social, @hystericalblkns.bsky.social, @philaprint.bsky.social, and everyone else working to make sure MOVE and its people aren't forgotten

religiondispatches.org/remembering-...

Penn settles a lawsuit over its handling of the remains of a MOVE bombing victim Lionell Dotson had contended that the school kept the remains of his sister Katricia after she was killed in the 1985 bombing of the Black liberation group’s West Philadelphia headquarters.

Anyone have access to the Philadelphia Inquirer & able to send me a PDF of this article that was published today? inquirer.com/health/move-...
re: Katricia Dotson's brother's lawsuit against Penn for keeping his sister's remains after she was murdered in the MOVE bombing.
lyra.d.monteiro at gmail