Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture
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evident, its effect on domestic policy proved equally profound. American fear o
f
communism produced an obsessive concern that communists living in America might
somehow bring down the country’s democratic institutions. Determined to resist such a
fate, American leaders compulsively searched for anyone espousing views that they felt
resembled ideas promoted by communism. Everything from discussions of economic
disparity to concerns over racial prejudice came under the heading of suspect ideas.
People speaking such thoughts became suspect themselves. Actual communists were
arrested and many who held strong views on social justice, whether communist or not,
found themselves under investigation as well. Although this assault on free speech is
often credited to
Republican
Senator Joseph
McCarthy,
a particularly virulent anti-
communist senator, anti-communist persecution was a bipartisan activity. Both
Democrats
and Republicans engaged in ferocious violations of civil liberties and human
rights in their quest to “preserve” democratic institutions in America. The legacies of this
Cold War in America included years of suspicion and thousands of ruined lives.
One can also trace the shattered remnants of civil society in the 1960s to a
controversial foreign policy abroad. American youth began to resist the apparently
endless struggle against a communist enemy who seemed to offer little direct threat. By
the end of the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of protestors angrily voiced loud dissent at
Cold War strategies. From the so-called “war at home” over Vietnam to the growing anti-
nuclear movement, the “Cold War consensus” (the presumed domestic support for
containment policies) began to unravel.
The official collapse of the Soviet Union as a dominant communist state provides the
“date” for the end of the Cold War. Faced with a weakened economy and the forces o
f
the international global marketplace, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet premier, began a
policy of “glasnost” (openness) in the mid-1980s. By 1989 it became clear that the Soviet
Union under Gorbachev would no longer enforce iron discipline on its satellites. When
the Berlin Wall (erected by the Soviets in 1961) began to come down in November 1989,
the end was near. Within a few months, the Soviet “monolith” had collapsed—its
authority undermined throughout the Eastern bloc and communism itself rejected within
what soon came to be “Russia.” Attitudes towards
Cuba,
nonetheless, reflect this
lingering heritage.
The cultural meanings of the Cold War are legion as well—from the definitions o
f
American
family,
home and values in media to the
blacklisting
of suspect communists in
Hollywood
. One also sees its schizophrenia at work in cultural works, exhibitions and
ideologies projecting American values into global competition, whether directly or
indirectly in Hollywood, and concerns at home with dire and subversive threats. These
concerns, again, could be expressed directly (in mysteries, spy movies and related genres
or films like
The Manchurian Candidate,
1962), while also underpinning the unease o
f
science fiction
in the 1950s and 1960s. Cultural critics, including academics, media
makers and activists, also attacked policies and mentalities of the Cold War in a range o
f
resistance from Noam
Chomsky
to Stanley Kubrick’s classic
Dr Strangelove
(1962).
Indeed, the Cold War became intimately enmeshed with both high culture and everyday
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 256
life for decades.
The Cold War dominated American foreign and domestic policy for over forty years.
Its impacts are still being felt as the United States remains uncertain as to its role in the
world if it is not engaged in an ideological battle with an overarching enemy
SHARON ULLMAN
collectibles
Barbed wire, dolls, first editions,
baseball
cards and dinnerware have achieved a post-
Marxist transmutation from use value to exchange value in becoming collectibles. The
emphasis, however, is on acquisition and sales as much as appreciation and process—
while collectors range from connoisseurs to middle people, the framework o
f
collectionism in late twentieth-century America was that of the market rather than the
Medicis.
The range of objects amassed, sorted, evaluated and disposed of maps out not only the
commodities of American life, but also its history—
celebrities,
events from Civil War
memorabilia to the
Titanic,
antiques
and ephemera made rare by their use and
disposability: Avon cosmetic bottles, advertisements, playing cards and beverage cans.
They may be held and used within private circles, maintained in constant commercial
motion or converted, in some cases, to the stuff of museums.
While stratification of culture and cash differentiates those who specialize in Monet
from those concentrating on license plates, both follow a logic of reproduction and
accumulation within industrial America, while they also reflect a nostalgia for a period o
f
still local mass production—iron toys made in nineteenth-century factories speak o
f
production and consumption on a scale very different from McDonald’s daily output o
f
toys worldwide. Collection implies uniqueness and limitation, although both are called
into question as
catalogs
and home-shopping channels flog newly minted collectible
items, from dolls to signed sports and
Star Trek
memorabilia. Often, past items are also
taken as indices of economic growth—
j
uxtaposing millions for De Kooning or Jasper
Johns with the sale of an original
Barbie,
or the speculative market (via catalogs,
Internet
and classified ads) for Beanie Babies in the late 1990s. Production may at least
temporarily collapse a collectible market; yet this in itself may yield a secondary
nostalgia further down the line.
Yet, the meanings of collectionism transcend the market. Collections can shape social
lives spent in weekend searches through antique stores, flea markets and other resources,
as well as demands for home care and display. Collectibles also form the cores of social
networks and collectivities—Trekkies as well as Picasso owners reinforce identities
through dialogues and memories as well as objects. Americans can find who they are
through what they own (and what ownership they display). Hence, Laurie Rozakis’
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Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying and Selling Collectibles
(1997) notes that “Collecting
something special, something that you have selected, allows you to express yourself.
Your collection shows the world you are special.” (1997:9). To rethink the collections
donated to the National Gallery or the Metropolitan, as well as family room displays o
f
beer cans raises intriguing questions about identity itself.
Further reading
Rozakis, L. (1997)
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying and Selling Collectibles,
Indianapolis: MacMillan.
GARY McDONOGH
CINDY WONG
college
s
ee
colleges and universities; black colleges and universities; campus, college;
commencement/ graduation; community colleges/junior colleges; libraries, research; state
university systems
colleges, Catholic
The 229 Roman Catholic
colleges and universities
in the US currently educate over
600,000 students. These institutions are affiliated with such religious institutes as the
Jesuits and the Sisters of Mercy or, in the case of Notre Dame, with the Congregation o
f
Holy Cross. As of 1989, 44 percent (100) are comprehensive institutions and another 40
percent (91) are liberal-arts colleges, with the rest research institutions or junior colleges.
Religious colleges tend to enroll higher numbers of women and part-time students than
do non-religious institutions. They also tend to be located in the
Midwest
and the
Northeast
part of the country.
Historically Catholics often felt unwelcome in many Protestant-dominated private and
state colleges. Catholic colleges were established to create a religious environment for
higher education and professional schools. These schools trained everincreasing numbers
of immigrant children and fostered inculturation in a Catholic milieu. They were highly
effective at both tasks. Even in the late twentieth century nearly 40 percent of these
students were the first in their families to attend college.
After the Second World War, the
GI Bill
offered tuition funds to
veterans
and this
influx of students caused many schools to expand greatly The increase in the number o
f
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 258
men with a college education fueled the postwar economy and propelled the percentage
of college-educated Catholics upward. The children of these alumni often attended
parochial schools
and added to the expansion.
In the 1960s, the liberalizing effects of the Second Vatican Council were felt in the
United States, and the increased numbers of wealthy and influential alumni contributed to
a movement to make Catholic colleges more academically competitive. In the late 1960s,
most institutions were turned over to boards of trustees, a majority of whom were lay
p
eople. At the same time, increasing openness to the new scientific methods shifted the
focus of scholarship to a more scientific and a less specifically Catholic perspective. The
p
ercentages of priests and religious teaching in the colleges began to drop, with a
concurrent hiring of lay people to respond to the increasing student population and the
desire for increased professionalism. Ultimately the debate over what it means to be a
Catholic, or religious, college grew. A few institutions even disaffiliated themselves from
the Catholic Church. Schools based their identity on the teaching of theology and the
development of faith life revolving around campus ministry programs. Concerns persist
that colleges are becoming less Catholic. Attempts by the
Roman Catholic
Church to
address the issue of higher education in the United States have centered, since 1991, on
the Apostolic Constitution
Ex Corde Ecclesiae
of Pope John Paul II, in which he defines
the nature of a Catholic university. Feverish debate continues unabated on this question
of Catholic identity.
Further reading
O’Brien, D.J. (1994)
From the Heart of the American Church,
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis.
Pope John Paul II (1991)
“Ex Corde Ecclesiae”
Current Issues in Catholic Higher
Education,
Winter: 31–42.
ERIC A.ZIMMER
colleges and universities
The United States hosts more than 3,000 institutions of higher education, serving 14
million highly varied students, learning/career plans and communities, as well as
embodying national ideals of research and learning. While some institutions have existed
for centuries, the 1944
GI Bill of Rights
opened colleges as a social opportunity in a new
way (college graduates tripled between 1930 and 1950). Subsequent social changes,
including economic
mobility, civil rights
and the careers of the
baby boomers,
have
elaborated on these changes: protests and explorations of the 1960s seemed a watershed
in ideas and operations. Together, history and choice underpin widespread student
Entries A-Z 259
aspirations for democratic opportunity and an ideal “fit” in terms of interests, personality
ability and finance. Colleges, in turn, may evoke multiple images of tree-lined
campuses,
football, fraternities,
intellectual debate,
commencement
and careers, although
experience sometimes controverts these stereotypes.
Higher education in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been shaped
by deep divisions of
class
and opportunity some of which have changed through
affirmative action,
social reform and curricular restructuring. The
Ivy League
is still not
the same as a
community
college
or part-time business program; variations in cost,
p
rogram, reputation, history, tutelage and impact shade many meanings of the college
experience for all participants. We look at these from the perspectives of student choices,
institutional differences and operations, and representation.
The student perspective
American college admissions and education differ from traditions of many other systems
worldwide. Students typically enter college after twelve years of schooling (rather than
having an additional baccalaureate year); advanced students may enter earlier. There are
no government-administered selection exams. Instead, privately administered
standardized testing
(SATs, ACTs) provide general standards to contextualize
differences of schools, grades, activities, essays and references that constitute an
admissions portfolio. Some students are guaranteed admissions to public universities by
grades or examination scores.
By spring of 11th grade,
teenagers
and their families examine guidebooks and
materials, prepare for entrance exams, talk with coaches and counselors, visit campuses
and reflect on finances and grades. Family teachers, recruiters and peers generally guide
candidates towards an initial selection of colleges based on interests, location, ambience
and possibilities. Colleges often have special procedures for foreign students and deal
with physical and emotional disabilities, as well as with variations in background.
Selection criteria vary widely Size, ranging from a few hundred to 80,000 at mega-
state universities, is an important consideration. Programs may offer a wide selection,
narrow pre-
p
rofessional training, or a liberal arts education. Urban or rural settings within
national and transnational choices are also a factor, although relative location may reflect
students’ needs/choices to live at home or in a place in which they are already settled or
to move away. Activities are also important, since colleges and universities are social
settings as well as academic institutions. Sports are intrinsic to many colleges as
p
articipant and spectator activities. Music, drama, social clubs, foreign study and
fraternities and sororities
also may be important extra-curricular features.
Costs figure prominently in selection as well. While there are still some free
universities or programs that facilitate attendance at public institutions for minimal
expense, the most expensive private colleges charge $30,000 or more for tuition, room
and board. Although college, private and government support may be available, this
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 260
remains a determinant and deterrent for many families and may extend the time that
students need to complete their college career through parttime enrollments.
Students may apply to multiple institutions. Some colleges are extremely competitive:
top schools accept only a fraction of those who apply even after a student’s pre-selection;
others have relatively open admissions. Colleges, in turn, make selections and
negotiations from within their applicant pool, leading to new negotiations.
College education for the student thereafter entails much more choice in classes,
majors, relationships and even movement than have been found in systems in Europe or
Asia. Many students change colleges during their career and may change their ideas o
f
their primary interests and majors. For those away from home, college is a time o
f
experimentation—sex, drugs, dress and bodily ornamentation. Some students are focused
on long- and short-term goals; others constitute
“slackers”
for whom college lingers for
years; still others must accommodate college along with work, family or other
pressures—especially those who choose to complete their education after the “traditional
age.” Yet there are colleges to meet all these needs and situations.
Structure, variety and operations
Institutional variety and continuous change and expansion have created a complicated
academic world in the US. Apart from community colleges and junior colleges (dealt
with separately), the fundamental division is between colleges (focused on the first four
years or undergraduate curriculum) and universities which incorporate postbaccalaureate
academic research and professional programs. This also implies different possibilities o
f
residential and curricular life,
research libraries
and laboratories, organization and
impact, etc. Other divisions are based on funding and oversight, curriculum, location,
clientele and prestige
Within both colleges and universities, the first four years are treated as general
education with some pre-
p
rofessional or disciplinary specialization, generally rewarded
with a BA (Bachelor of Arts) or BS (Bachelor of Science), after which students may stop
or pause in their education. Students who go on must reapply, often to different
institutions in new admissions competition with new letters, exams, applications and
interviews. This competition has intensified decade by decade, especially in medical, law,
b
usiness and other schools seen as guarantees of economic security. Social work,
theology nursing, engineering and other fields also offer professional and research
degrees at various levels. Professional schools demand students pay their own way; hence
students may accumulate $100,000 in debt. Businesses may support some usable
expertise; other options include military arrangements, trading tuition for later service.
Advanced programs in humanities, sciences and social sciences also may be highly
competitive in prestige (all programs, even at prestige universities, are not equal) which,
in turn, influences support from universities, government and, in the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, corporate sponsorship. These graduate schools have offered teaching
Entries A-Z 261
opportunities and fellowships for their best students.
Colleges and universities vary in their funding, including both public and private
institutions. The primary public institutions are
state university systems;
although cities
have also created colleges, many have been absorbed into the state because of rising
costs. Even
City University of New York
relies heavily on state support. Private
universities include religious colleges, which may receive denominational support. Other
universities must strike a balance between endowment and tuition; some are operated for
profit. Only military institutions are federally funded, although federal and
foundation
funds are important to many public and private colleges. Partnerships with industry and
venture capital, especially in growth fields like biotechnology and computers, have
changed university funding and research—to the distaste of some who see business
setting agendas.
Differences of place and culture are also clear.
New England
is home to a strong
liberal arts tradition and the prestige of the Ivy League—challenged by
Stanford
University
and the University of Chicago among other prestige schools. While many
universities have developed with
cities,
others were established in bucolic locations (the
University of Virginia), stressing the pastoral ideal of reflective learning. The college
town represents a particular symbiosis of the university as population (and employer)
with surrounding communities that may result in special “town/gown” tensions.
Religious colleges have followed denominational distribution to some extent—
evangelical in the
South,
Catholic in urban areas of the
Northeast
and Midwest. Many
traditionally
African American
colleges have been located in the South.
Some divisions, clear at the Second World War, nonetheless, have changed radically in
subsequent decades. At that point, many American institutions were essentially
white
or
b
lack, except for immigrant/foreign students; quotas on Jews or Catholics were part o
f
twentieth-century elite schools as well. The
civil-rights
movement in the 1950s
challenged segregation of public institutions in the South and forced the issue of diversity
in other schools. Affirmative action, coupled with
immigration
and recognition o
f
ethnicity changed the face of American colleges in the 1970s and 1980s. Ironically some
p
restigious colleges have become concerned about the disproportionate presence o
f
Asians and
Asian Americans,
while qualified
Latinos
and blacks are hotly recruited.
This has called into question the role of traditionally
black colleges and universities
.
Men’s colleges through the postwar period included quite prestigious institutions like
Harvard and Yale that co-educated in the 1960s and 1970s. Charges of discrimination
later forced military academies and others to open up. Some women’s colleges went co-
ed at this time; others have continued to argue for distinctive education.
Programs also vary Military institutions like West Point
(army),
Annapolis
(navy)
and
the
air force
academy offer specialized programs with federal support through which
nominated students can be trained for officer duty. Gallaudet College, by contrast, was
founded for the American deaf and has emerged as a center for reconsideration of the
meaning of disabilities. Berea College in Kentucky and other colleges specialize in work-
study and regional development. The 1960s also saw the inauguration of experimental
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 262
p
rograms in larger institutions and in smaller schools favoring independent learning,
sometimes without grades or with close mentoring—Bennington, Antioch, New College
of the University of South Florida.
Class and prestige both among universities and among students reshape the social and
cultural meanings of the institution. University prestige is based on being the best, hiring
the best and reproducing the best. This status is generally granted to research universities
with graduate programs (increasing their support), but is also claimed by intensive liberal
arts.
Hence, in addition to students, colleges and universities select faculty through a
winnowing process of scrutiny of their teaching and writing before granting them tenure,
usually in their fifth to seventh year of an institutional appointment. Tenure was
originally championed to protect
freedom
of speech in academic settings; it has come
under fire as both a process favoring narrow criteria like publication and as a sinecure
that no longer corresponds to the experience of other American workers and
professionals.
Professors, in turn, may be both private and public
intellectuals,
focusing on classes
and research or reaching out in publications and community events. Demands and
rewards vary widely among colleges and universities. Facilities are also variable,
including library and research support, laboratories and national and global connections.
Other staffing includes coaches (who may hold academic positions) and many non-
academic positions. Here, demands in areas of advising, counseling for special students
and groups, legal issues, fundraising and budgeting, as well as library computer, clerical
and other support staff have made non-faculty salaries and issues one of the dominant
themes of university planning and student and faculty life (especially when labor
organization in these areas influences the operation of the institution).
University administration also includes multiple levels of expertise associated with
student life and issues, faculty, sports, alumni, finance and planning—generally under a
p
resident who must balance internal and external roles. Colleges and universities, private
and public, also have boards of directors or trustees, elected and appointed, who may
include distinguished alumni, major donors, prominent citizens and representatives from
university constituencies.
Finally, alumni have strong roles in both public and private colleges as recruiters,
supporters and even voices about current policy issues (antiwar campus activism in the
1960s, for example, often drew angry protests from alumni correspondents).
Yet the multiple meanings and possibilities of education always intersect with students
and questions about the nature of education. Are universities to be composed of the
“best” students academically? Those most able to pay? Those most likely to make money
to change the world, to represent diverse viewpoints and heritages, or to profit from
special care? Should they be trained as specialized careerists or broad critical thinkers?
With the end of the baby boom and the emergence of new technologies of knowledge and
education (including distance learning and development of computer and/or video-
b
ased
courses), colleges face rising costs, growing competition and real challenges.
Entries A-Z 263
Representation
Images and meanings of college have been reinforced by
mass media
for decades,
including important early images in Frank Merriwell novels, Owen Johnson’s
Stover a
t
Yale
(1912) and Buster Keaton silent films. In the postwar period, teen audiences have
made colleges a major subject for television and movies. Movies including
The Knute
R
ockne All American
(1940),
Tall Story
(1960),
The Group
(1967), tracing lives o
f
graduates from a woman’s college,
The Graduate
(1967),
Strawberry Statement
(1970),
N
ational Lampoon’s Animal House
(1978),
Slacker
(1991) and
Good Will Huntin
g
(1997), among many others, represent and explore differences, and often define college
for a generation of students.
Similarly colleges have figured as important settings on television (although they may
entail very little classwork).
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
(CBS, 1958–63), for
example, provided weekly meditations on sex, class and college. In the 1990s, Bill
Cosby
focused another
situation comedy,
A Different World
(NBC, 1987–93), on the
experience of traditionally African American colleges. Graduate and professional schools
have also figured in mass media: law in the
Paper Chase
(1973), or medicine in countless
television dramas. Academic literature (written by students and professors) also provides
interesting insights into college life.
Further reading
Various guides aimed at prospective students explore and compare American colleges
and universities according to criteria of ranking, size, special features and cost. General
considerations of issues in late twentieth and early twenty-first century American higher
education include:
Reuben, J. (1996)
The Making of the Modern University,
Chicago: University of Chicago.
Ehrenberg, J. (ed.) (1997)
The American University,
Cornell: Cornell University Press
Graham, H. and Diamond, N. (1997)
The Rise of the American Research University,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.
Horowitz, H. (1987)
Campus Life,
New York: Alfred A.Knopf.
Levine, A. (ed.) (1993)
Higher Learning in America,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University.
GARY McDONOGH
ROBERT GREGG
CINDY WONG
college sports
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 264
s
ee
National Collegiate Athletic Association
colonies and colonialism
Americans have been avid colonizers. Given the United States’ history as a postcolonial
nation, this statement may seem perplexing. But Americans have been deeply embroiled
in colonial projects in establishing their place in the global order, whether in dominating
Latin America
and the
Caribbean
or annexing
Hawai’i
and the Philippines. This led to
especially ambiguous politics in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the nation
endeavored to come to grips with the break up of major empires and the increase o
f
nationalism worldwide, while supporting its own interests of business and consumption.
Even thirteen colonies breaking away from British rule did not abandon the idea o
f
controlling further land and even peoples. A century of expansionism on the American
mainland followed, although technical niceties allowed Americans to claim they were
never colonizers. The Louisiana Purchase, for example, opening up vast tracts of land to
the United States, nonetheless transferred an area and its people from one colonial rule
(French) to another (American). That this area was divided into territories later to be
incorporated into the American federal system just made this colonialism one more akin
to the French model than to the British model. The expansion of plantation slavery into
the
Southwest,
wars against
American Indians
and
Mexico
and the purchase of
Alaska
all had colonial overtones. That these were wrapped up in the mystical language o
f
“manifest destiny,” suggesting that white Americans were destined to govern the whole
N
orth American mainland, should not distract from recognizing this colonizing mission.
Americans, as Walt Whitman pointed out as the nation’s second century was opening,
were forging their own “passage to India.”
That second century would witness an immediate commitment to the expansionist
impulse as the US competed with other major industrial nations. Wars with
Americans
Indians
continued opening up new territories to largely European settlers. Then the US
expanded to the Pacific, “opening the door” to Japan and acquiring Hawai’i and the
Philippines (the latter in the Spanish-American War of 1898). In the Caribbean,
meanwhile, the US took
Cuba
and
Puerto Rico
(also in the 1898 conflict), and
established control over the
Panama
isthmus, while intervening regularly in other
countries under its self-proclaimed rights under the Monroe doctrine.
The complex legacy of direct colonialism would also affect American relations around
the world. Woodrow Wilson’s support for self-determination applied only to European
peoples, not those over whom they ruled in Africa and Asia (to the ire of W.E.B.
Du
Bois
). Later, anti-
communism
translated into support for European masters against
nationalists, who received moral and military support from the Soviet Union.
The Second World War brought a short-lived change in the American position on
Entries A-Z 265