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Join professor of death, technology, and religion Jamie L. Brummitt for a richly illustrated talk about the ways early Americans mourned the death of George Washington by visiting his grave at Mount Vernon and collecting his locks of hair, coffin fragments, and handwriting, all in the hopes of communicating with his heavenly soul. In early America, Washington’s relics functioned as religious and political objects. Many people assumed Washington’s relics had the supernatural power to transform the minds, bodies, souls, of Americans into virtuous and patriotic citizens. Through these religious and political mourning practices, Mount Vernon became the sacred center of the early American republic, even as these relic practices became entangled in debates over slavery.