Regulation and Discipline: Inequality and the Schooling of Bodies in American Colleges and Universities, 1900-2000

• In Event: 577 - Section on Body and Embodiment Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 03. Regulating Bodies

Abstract

This paper examines the socializing role of colleges and universities and how these institutions exerted control over the bodies of students. In order to examine how these rules and regulations map onto social inequalities, I examine changes over the twentieth century across five types of institutions that served different types of students—elite colleges and universities, public/state institutions, women’s colleges, Jesuit colleges and historically black colleges and universities. First, I make a theoretical distinction between regulations based on moral authority (regulatory requirements on attendance at chapel, dress codes, and behavior) that assumed the body as a dangerous site of transgression and those based on disciplinary authority or the authority of knowledge (prescribed coursework in physical education, hygiene, and elocution) that views the body as an object of knowledge and show their distinct historical trajectories. I find that institutions that serve African American students and to a lesser extent, women and Catholic minorities, exerted and continue to exert more control over the bodies of students, revealing how social relations and inequalities are not manifested only in terms of access to economic, educational, and cultural resources, but they are also embodied.

Author

• Karen Jeong Robinson, CSU San Bernardino