In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Preface At noon the sun’s rays slant through the canopy formed by the trees. Leaves are drying and rapidly changing to hues of red and gold. Still warm days evaporate the frost that has begun to coat the landscape. Anticipation of new beginnings hangs ripe in the air alongside the smell of new shoes and notebooks and freshly sharpened pencils. On Friday nights and Saturday afternoons thousands of voices create rumbling roars that echo across campuses and neighborhoods. Loudspeakers and radio and television announcers extol the heritage and tradition of the venerable teams and institutions that have come to do battle. In the United States the annual autumn migration back to school has begun. For nearly three and a half centuries before Rod Stewart crooned in his 1971 song “Maggie May” that it was time to return to school in the early days of autumn, the youth of English-speaking America repeated this ritual. In so doing they created an idealized picture of education not simply as a process but as a place or a backdrop for examining commonly shared experiences. Libraries are replete with campus histories. Most were written at the time of significant anniversaries, like those of our own institutions (Beal 1915; Giacomini and McKevitt 2000; Kuhn 1955; McKevitt 1979; Skowronek 2002; Widder 2005) and largely represent institutional histories. That is, they are meant to celebrate the development of larger institutions and focus on its broader scale. By necessity, they are less concerned with the daily lives of the students and faculty who lived and interacted on the campus. Institutional histories also rely heavily on documents, whose contents tend to be biased toward “accepted” behaviors and activities rather than all behaviors. Because they lack other sources, they often omit significant information about the past. This book is the first of its kind in the field of archaeology. While many archaeologists have excavated both prehistoric and historic sites that are buried beneath campuses, very few have examined the material evidence of earlier lifeways associated with the schools themselves. The contributors to this volume have recognized that such investigations are an opportunity not only to examine the changing face of their home institution and so understand both legal and illicit behavior but at the same time to train students in the nuances of archaeology and celebrate campus history. What can we xviii Preface learn from studying the tangible remains of the world of academia? Can we discern patterns in the material record? Will they confirm old stereotypes or contradict popularly and institutionally created “stories” about campus life? Recognizing Educational Stereotypes When we consider how “school” has been depicted in novels, plays, television , and film we can see certain trends that resonate across generations. One-room schoolhouses described by Mark Twain, Lucy Maud Montgomery , and Laura Ingalls Wilder instill in the reader a sense of how, in the rudest of settings, the antipathy of some students was countered by others in their successful quest for knowledge. Since the 1940s secondary schools have been a staple setting for examining the many issues associated with teenagers coming of age and the changing American moral, social, and technological landscape. From the light comedy of Our Miss Brooks and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in the 1950s and 1960s to the gritty high schools of New York, Los Angeles, and Portland, we find teachers in Up the Down Staircase (1967), Room 222 (1969–74), Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995), and The Bill Cosby Show (1969–71) sharing their passion for their respective subject areas. Their audience consists of seemingly uninspired and unmotivated students who seem more akin to the Sweathogs of Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–79) than to the imaginative Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables) of an earlier generation. Colleges are depicted very differently in popular media. Sports are a favorite topic. Films like Knute Rockne, All American (1940) and Rudy (1993) helped shape the image of Notre Dame football. Similarly, Glory Road (2006) captured the excitement of a basketball team overcoming racism to win the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship. Life in the academy is often shown as petty and dysfunctional, as a place where the adage “Never have so many fought so hard for so little” rings all too true. From Kingsley Amis’ novel Lucky Jim (1954) to Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), Richard Russo’s book Straight Man (1997), or the short-lived television program The Education of Max Bickford (2001–2) we...

Share