Creating the college man: American magazines, masculinity and business success in transition, 1880–1929

Daniel Andrew Clark, Purdue University

Abstract

How did the idea of going to college become so ingrained in American conceptions of achieving a successful life in this century, particularly for businessmen who had long held college men in contempt? The answer to this question has led to the dawn of the corporate and consumer age around 1900, when American businessmen wrestled with the imperatives of a new business and social environment. This study explores how mass magazines around the turn-of-the-century encouraged these men (perceived as the magazine's typical male readers) to view college education as a new possible route to forming their manhood and achieving business success, two areas with which college had rarely been associated. These new mass magazines occupied a critical position in American culture during this time, rising to become the first truly national media, so that ideas and visions encouraged in the magazines carried an unprecedented power to shape cultural expectations. Magazine editors, writers, and advertisers reconstructed a multi-faceted vision of the college experience that incorporated the idea of going to college into evolving definitions of masculinity and business success. The magazines presented college as a place to forge both traditional manhood and the modern skills of a future corporate leader. The liberal arts instilled the cultural breadth necessary for the ideal executive, while the college's new identification with science enabled a degree holder to claim modern professional expertise. Magazines also posited the college extracurricular, particularly football, in ways that simultaneously allowed men to imagine preserving a rugged manhood at college, while learning corporate teamwork, and also allowing for the modern expression of the male passions. Finally, magazines helped recast the college man in the self-made tradition, idealizing the self-supporting student and the college graduate who worked up from the ranks to a position of leadership. The magazine makeover of the college man and the insertion of the college experience into the vision of corporate mobility played a vital role not only in the popularization of college, but also in facilitating the transformation of in American ideals of masculinity from the Victorian to the modern corporate and consumer-oriented age.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Curtis, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American history|Education history|Mass media

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