Queens of Academe

Beauty Pageantry, Student Bodies, and College Life
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-984280-3
Verlag: OUP US

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 448 g

Universities are unlikely venues for grading, branding, and marketing beauty, bodies, poise, and style. Nonetheless, thousands of college women have sought not only college diplomas but campus beauty titles and tiaras throughout the twentieth century. The cultural power of beauty pageants continues today as campus beauty pageants, especially racial and ethnic pageants and pageants for men, have soared in popularity.

In Queens of Academe, Karen W. Tice asks how, and why, does higher education remain in the beauty and body business and with what effects on student bodies and identities. She explores why students compete in and attend pageants such as "Miss Pride" and "Best Bodies on Campus" as well as why websites such as "Campus Chic" and campus-based etiquette and charm schools are flourishing. Based on archival research and interviews with contemporary campus queens and university sponsors as
well as hundreds of hours observing college pageants on predominantly black and white campuses, Tice examines how campus pageant contestants express personal ambitions, desires, and, sometimes, racial and political agendas to resolve the incongruities of performing in evening gowns and bathing suits on stage
while seeking their degrees. Tice argues the pageants help to illuminate the shifting terrain of class, race, religion, sexuality, and gender braided in campus rituals and student life. Moving beyond a binary of objectification versus empowerment, Tice offers a nuanced analysis of the contradictory politics of education, feminism, empowerment, consumerism, race and ethnicity, class, and popular culture have on students, idealized masculinities and femininities, and the stylization of higher
education itself.

Zielgruppe

Students and scholars of sociology, women's studies, American studies, and education.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tice, Karen Whitney

Tice, Karen W.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Altersgruppen Kinder- und Jugendsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Beauty and the Boar
Chapter 2. Cleavage and Campus Life
Chapter 3. Pride and Pulchritude: Campus Pageant Politics, 1920-1980
Chapter 4. Making the Grade in the New Millennium: Beauty, Platforming, Celebrity, and Normativity
Chapter 5. "We Are Here" Pageants as Racial "Homeplaces" and Ethnic Combat Zones
Chapter 6. Class Acts and Class Work: Poise and the Polishing of Campus Queens
Chapter 7. Flesh and Spirit: Bibles, Beauty, and Bikinis
Chapter 8. Afterward: Class Work/Homework
Endnotes
Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Tice, Karen W.
Karen Tice is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender & Women's Studies and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Tales of Wayward Girls and Immoral Women: Case Records and the Professionalization of Social Work (Illinois, 1998).