House Signs and Collegiate Fun

Sex, Race, and Faith in a College Town

Chaise LaDousa author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Indiana University Press

Published:24th Jun '11

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

House Signs and Collegiate Fun cover

An introduction to the ethnography of college life

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.

"A fascinating, surprising, and intriguing look at pervasive house signs in a Midwestern U.S. college town, this book will delight college students, appeal to those who teach them, and engage those who study them across several disciplines. It is a skillful analysis of contemporary material culture, its playfulness, creativity, and ambiguities. It is also a vivid example of the multiple ways in which people engage with signs (visual or verbal)--from assuming that they have obvious meanings to privileging particular interpretations ,and even to denying that signs have any meaning at all." —Virginia Dominguez, University of Illinois


"LaDousa makes excellent use of the formal interviews collected by his students to show that house signs are indeed a serious subject. In doing so he has provided us with a valuable text for introducing students to the field of linguistic anthropology and the process of collecting and analyzing data about textual practices in everyday life." —Journal of Linguistic Anthropology


"LaDousa presents 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


"A very lively read, one of those rare books that brings a sophisticated interpretive perspective together with ethnographic materials that are engaging, thought-provoking, and, for many of us and especially for our students, both experience-near and surprising. Good to read and think with, and likely to become, quite deservedly, a classic for undergraduate teaching." —Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz

ISBN: 9780253223265

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 431g

288 pages