Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present / Edition 1

by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz

Overview

"Based on subtle, imaginative readings of autobiographies, memoirs, fiction and secondary sources, [Campus Life] tells the story of the changing mentalities of American undergraduates over two centuries."—Michael Moffatt, New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226353739
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	04/15/1988
Edition description:	1
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz is the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor of American Studies and History emerita at Smith College.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: The Worlds That Undergraduates Make
2. College Men: The War between Students and Faculty
3. Outsiders: The Loyal Opposition
4. Rebels: The Idol Breakers
5. The Sideshows and the Circus
6. The Organized
7. Jacobins and Other Rebels
8. Meatballs and Other Outsiders
9. College Women and Coeds
10. The 1960s
11. The Nerds Take Revenge
12. The New Outsiders, College Men and Women, and Rebels Today
Coda
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

When high school rebels embark upon college, they can pursue well-defined avenues of political or artistic expression, thanks to an alternative subculture available to American college freshmen since 1910, the author notes. The same is true for students who are more in the mainstreamthey can fall in step with a campus subculture that downplays academic work while glorifying social grace and athletic prowess. In addition to collegiate types and rebels, Horowitz, professor of history at the Univ. of Southern California, identifies a third subculture, that of the ``outsiders.'' For these intensely serious students, college is primarily a means to rise in the world. This comprehensive social history redefines the terrain of campus life, past and present. By grounding her schema in vivid history and anecdote, the author is able to tackle head-on a fraternity-bred tradition, still wide-spread, which devalues academic and intellectual achievement. A path-breaking study. (April 16)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

``To put it directly,'' writes Horowitz, ``college men and the faculty remain at war. Students who assumed the culture of college life avoided any contact with the enemy beyond that required. Knowing they would lose in open conflict, such students turned to deception, using any means to circumvent rules. . . . '' The situation she describes is at Yale in the early 1800s, not Columbia in the 1960s. Horowitz ( Alma Mater , LJ 8/84) has drawn on a wealth of material to offer a balanced yet candid appraisal of how each generation of American students has passed on its ``culture,'' and how that culture has helped shape the modern college. She also provides an excellent context for assessing the recommendations of various national commissions aimed at changing the American college of the 1980s and beyond. Highly recommended. Richard H. Quay, Miami Univ . Libs., Oxford, Ohio

Library Journal