Trivial Matters: Claiming Space at Graduation
By Sheila Bock
In 2016, I began conducting research on how graduating college students personalize their graduation attire, giving focused attention to the ways many graduates transform the tops of their graduation caps, or mortarboards, into sites of creative expression. Attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ commencement ceremonies each December and May and gathering other examples from all over the country, I delighted in the sometimes beautiful, sometimes poignant, sometimes outright hilarious ways people would claim the flat, square space on the top of their caps. I also appreciated the ways each of these designs claimed space in the secular ritual of commencement.
As a ritual, the university commencement ceremony functions not only as a rite of passage—performatively marking the transition of individual graduates from one stage of life to another—but also as a rite of intensification that affirms broader cultural narratives about the purpose and value of higher education. These broader cultural narratives coincide with the promises of the American Dream, a prevalent force in the history of the United States that is grounded in the core values of equality of opportunity, hard work, perseverance, and an enduring optimism for eventual success. Throughout the course of my research, I came to recognize graduates’ cap designs as taking shape in relation to these broader cultural narratives: affirming them, questioning them, complicating them, resisting them.
In my book Claiming Space: Performing the Personal through Decorated Mortarboards, I liken decorated mortarboards in university commencement ceremonies to marginalia illuminating sacred medieval texts, creative acts initially understood to be “mere” embellishment, but were found to play a significant role in shaping the meaning of the texts. The cap designs themselves might seem trivial within the broader context of the ritual, but there is significant power in the things that get categorized as “trivial,” a power that grows out of the freedom and playfulness that emerge at the margins of the more serious stuff of culture. Individually, these cap designs are performances of the personal, seized opportunities for bringing a more holistic self into the space of commencement and putting it on display. Collectively, I have found that they offer valuable insight into graduates’ perspectives on the purpose and value of higher education, perspectives that reflect both celebration and ambivalence, optimism and uncertainty, gratitude and critique.
Sheila Bock is a folklorist and associate professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is the author of Claiming Space: Performing the Personal through Decorated Mortarboards.
All photos courtesy of Sheila Bock.