House Signs and Collegiate Fun: Sex, Race, and Faith in a College Town

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Sex,Race,and Faith in a College Town Chaise LaDousa House Signs House Signs and Collegiate Collegiate Fun Fun It’s no secret that fun is important to American college students, but it is unusual for scholars to pay attention to how undergraduates represent and reflect on their partying. Linguist and anthropologist Chaise LaDousa explores the visual manifestations of collegiate fun in a Midwestern college town where house signs on off-campus student residences are a focal point of college culture. With names like Boot ’N Rally, The Plantation, and Crib of the Rib, house signs reproduce consequential categories of gender, sexuality, race, and faith in a medium students say is benign. Through his analysis of house signs and what students say about them, LaDousa introduces the reader to key concepts and approaches in cultural analysis. Chaise LaDousa is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Hamilton College. H o use S i gn s Collegiate fun H o use S i gn s Collegiate fun LaDousa INDIANA “Good to read and think with, and likely to become, quite deservedly, a classic for undergraduate teaching.” —Donald Brenneis University of California, Santa Cruz “A skillful analysis of contemporary material culture—its playfulness, creativity, and ambiguities—[and] a vivid example of the multiple ways in which people engage with signs, visual or verbal.” —Virginia Dominguez University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign “[P]resents weighty matters with intelligence and nuance, and yet always clearly, and with a wealth of data that generates a multitude of ‘aha’ moments.” —James Collins University at Albany, SUNY INDIANA University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796 and Anthropology • Popular Culture House Signs and Collegiate Fun House Signs and Collegiate Fun Sex, Race, and Faith in a College Town Chaise LaDousa Indiana University Press Bloomington & Indianapolis This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, Indiana 47404-­ 3797 USA iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-­ 842-­ 6796 Fax orders 812-­ 855-­ 7931 Orders by e-­ mail iuporder@indiana.edu© 2011 by Chaise LaDousa All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of Ameri­ can University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. > The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the Ameri­ can National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48—1992. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data LaDousa, Chaise. House signs and collegiate fun : sex, race, and faith in a college town / Chaise LaDousa.    p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-253-35642-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-25322326 -5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Universities and colleges—United States. 2. Universities and colleges—Social aspects—United States. 3. Signs and signboards—United States. 4. College campuses—United States. I. Title. LA227.4.L34 2011 306.43′2—dc22 2010050903 1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12 11 For Michael from Ohio Determining what popular culture means is not a matter of semantics. —johannes fabian, Moments of Freedom ...