An irony of the modern mega-university is how few of its constituents possess a passion and insight for the institution’s historical and cultural traditions. Students come and go in alarming numbers and with great frequency, they have fewer opportunities for small-class experiences with inspired mentors, and the recent surge of on-line courses diminishes the very time spent on the symbol-laden university campus. Faculty are often even more distant; they traditionally come to their new institution from afar, face an onslaught on new-course preparations, and are seemingly always made aware of their top priority—acceptance of their work in peer-reviewed publishing venues. University librarians, frequently seen as the primary keepers of campus history, have endured enormous cuts in resources, special-collection venues are increasingly facing space limitations and financial shortfall, and overall budgetary restrictions on archival and curatorial endeavors greatly constrict abilities to exhibit local and institutional culture in any capacity. Even alumni associations now are habitually so overrun with fund-raising and athletic priorities that engagement with their institution’s most time-honored traditions are secondary. Just as social critics lament the devaluation of the collegiate degree and scholars observe the deritualization of the university experience, the primary stakeholders in campus traditions (students, faculty, staff, and alumni) have been distanced from the symbolic process that can cement and unify institutional and personal legacies.
Simon J. Bronner’s masterful 2012 text, Campus Traditions: Folklore from the Old-Time College to the Modern Mega-University, is an antidote to this situation and the malaise that has resulted; it helps stem the tide of university-based corporate modeling, shifting political priorities, and consequent crippling monetary woes that have eroded the passions and priorities of so many individuals once invested in campus traditions. In his studies of American campus traditions over time, Bronner adroitly identifies college as a liminal space and the university experience as a rite of passage for students, invoking the symbolic and structural works of Arnold Van Gennep (1960), Victor Turner (1969), and Alan Dundes (1980). Those familiar with the two editions of his previous landmark book on campus folklore—Piled Higher and Deeper (1990 and 1995)—will note how he blends his analysis of symbolic form in university folklore with a reification of the ritual process through re-birth and unification in the community. Bronner designs Campus Traditions to parallel the student journey—beginning with entry and orientation, including an introduction to the main characters and conventional plot lines of the everyday college drama, and ending with graduation itself—but is careful to close each chapter with poetic prose and pithy maxims that ensure his reader simultaneously embraces both the general symbolic process and the historical details. Despite being arranged thematically, Campus Traditions manages to provide diachronic perspectives on how institutions of higher education have evolved. From overviews of pioneering movements at Harvard and the College of William and Mary to the Morrill Act of 1862 that established land grant colleges, and on to the World Wars and the flood of GI Bill students, Bronner adeptly situates campus traditions in contemporary historical, political, and social context. In addition to documenting the overall emergence, establishment, entrenchment, and erosion of traditional life-ways at today’s mega-university, Campus Traditions has an immediate relevance; it is nearly impossible to read the text’s detailed insights without immediately thinking of and drawing parallels with one’s own collegiate affiliations—be it in the realm of undergraduate studies, graduate research, or a faculty position.
One of the book’s main strengths also reveals a limitation. In the process of poignantly noting how the verisimilitude of particularistic old-time collegiate traditions (e.g., pushball contests, beanie-wearing freshmen, etc.) is more accurately seen as a broader and more cohesive cultural pattern, Bronner’s text leaves the reader yearning for spatial analyses to be coupled with the historical insights. He focuses more on general synchronic similarities across space than on pinpointing the diachronic pattern of invention, diffusion, migration, and emulation of ideas across the nation’s collegiate campuses (cf. Glassie 1968). Nevertheless, Bronner’s attention to a common institutional evolution is both an important research contribution and a reminder that for us as academics, regardless of our particular disciplines, the university is our community, meaning that we are all stakeholders in keeping and honoring the historical and cultural traditions of our current institution.
Works Cited
Bronner, Simon J. 1995 [1990]. Piled Higher and Deeper: The Folklore of Campus Life. Little Rock: August House.
Dundes, Alan. 1980. Interpreting Folklore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Glassie, Henry. 1968. Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine.
Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960 [1909]. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
--------
[Review length: 772 words • Review posted on March 20, 2013]