Inequality in the Academy: An Intersectional Analysis of Young College Men in 19th Century Lexington, Virginia

Summary

What can intersectionality offer to a study of an all-male antebellum dormitory? While this approach has typically been used to identify and combat race- and gender-based discrimination, this paper argues that intersectional theory can also illuminate subtle class- and age-based inequalities among historic individuals of the same gender and race. Archaeological investigation of Graham Hall, a combined dormitory/classroom space/chapel located on the campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, has revealed a diverse array of material culture representing multiple activities, individuals, and social statuses. Viewed through an intersectional lens, Graham Hall becomes a locus of intersecting identities and hierarchies: as young men from disparate places and classes negotiated their positions within the student body, age-based hierarchies contributed to tensions and occasional power struggles between students and older community authorities. In engaging intersectionality in an atypical way, this research highlights the antebellum student body (and their associated artifacts) as not a single homogeneous whole, but as a spectrum of multivalent and multilayered axes of identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Gender, Race, and Other Consequential Categories: Experiments in Intersectional Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17491