College and university mascots serve as touchstones for social and political change; they also symbolize their institutions’ and regions’ identity. In this engaging and highly informative book, Rosemary V. Hathaway explores the cultural history of West Virginia University’s Mountaineer, which has been the university’s mascot since 1937. Her study of this mascot’s complex history provides an excellent model for analysis of other university mascots.
Hathaway argues that the Mountaineer represents West Virginia’s core mythology: poor but principled, he is a pioneer who resists slavery and contributes to the founding of his state by following his conscience. One significant insight is that “the Mountaineer’s virtues straddle the boundary between civility and order: he is not afraid to leave civilization behind and confront the ambiguities and dangers of the natural world, and he is willing to fight for what he believes in, even if it means rejecting the status quo” (7). Since the Mountaineer is both a culture hero and a trickster, he is ideally suited for adaptation to changes in campus culture. Citing Barbara Babcock-Abrahams, Hathaway explains that “the trickster’s testing function is essential” (8). Institutions rely on tricksters to disrupt their boundaries and remind them of the values that have been important for their formation and development.
Following the Mountaineer from colonial times to the present, Hathaway demonstrates the mascot’s relationship to earlier iconic figures but shows that it has its own distinct identity. The two figures to which it is most closely related are the backwoodsman, best known as the folk hero Davy Crockett, and the hillbilly or squatter, which became popular in early mass media. In the early 1900s people used the term “mountain whites” to describe white residents of Appalachia who lived in relative isolation and followed their own traditions. Later in the twentieth century, the hillbilly became known as a rowdy, rebellious person who enjoyed drinking moonshine. Even though the hillbilly era reached its peak in the 1940s, it still had enough appeal that the television show The Beverly Hillbillies was a hit in the 1960s.
Hathaway’s archival research yields much intriguing information, but some of the most interesting material comes from her interviews with former students who have played the role of the Mountaineer, which has served as “a locus for playing with ideas about rebellion, dissent, patriotism, and Appalachian identity” (11). In the turbulent 1960s, when student dissent rose to new heights, the Mountaineer participated in expressions of outrage and concern. After the Kent State shootings in May of 1970, for example, WVU students gathered to express their reactions. Bob Lowe, who served as Mountaineer during the 1970-71 school year, told Hathaway that “West Virginia State Police in riot gear” (133) had broken up a student protest by throwing tear gas. Doug Townshend, who served as Mountaineer from the spring of 1969 to the spring of 1970, said that students at the protest were “throwing water balloons at each other” (131); later in the interview, after the tape-recorder was turned off, he revealed that the water balloons were filled with ammonia. As a folklorist, Hathaway understands that “each man’s perception of the original events was deeply shaped by his own experiences and beliefs as well as when and where each was physically present” (136). Her interpretation of these two interviews and others is insightful and thought-provoking.
Another interesting aspect of the Mountaineer is its association with masculinity. The first female Mountaineer was Natalie Tennant, whose term of service was 1990-91. Opposition to Tennant generated bumper stickers and buttons saying “We don’t want a Mountaindear, Give us back our Mountaineer” (163). Facing sexism and criticism, Tennant and a later female Mountaineer, Rebecca Durst, showed fellow students that it was possible for a woman to take the role of their university’s mascot. However, controversy about female Mountaineers remained so difficult for West Virginia University that it undertook a process of “erasing the Mountaineer’s body,” limiting the Mountaineer logo to athletics in the second decade of the twenty-first century (186-87).
In the last chapter, “Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Twenty-First-Century Mountaineer,” Hathaway asks important questions. What is next for the WVU Mountaineer? Will a person of color be chosen to serve as the Mountaineer in the future? Showing that this university mascot is “a vital and adaptable symbol of institutional and state identity” (218), she asks readers to ponder the potency of this kind of symbol. I hope that folklorists will follow her lead in analyzing mascots of other colleges and universities.
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[Review length: 745 words • Review posted on September 3, 2020]