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Tag Archives: homophobia

Graffiti analysis part 5: University of Chicago

This is the last in a five-part series of posts describing the results of my analysis of my graffiti corpora. I strongly recommend you read “Prelude to a graffiti analysis” first to understand the methodology, data, and sampling. You might also be interested in part 1, Arizona State University; part 2, University of Colorado – [...]

Graffiti analysis part 4: Brown University

This is the third in a five-part series of posts describing the results of my analysis of my graffiti corpora. I strongly recommend you read “Prelude to a graffiti analysis” first to understand the methodology, data, and sampling. You might also be interested in part 1, Arizona State University; part 2, University of Colorado – [...]

Graffiti analysis part 3: University of California at Berkeley

This is the third in a five-part series of posts describing the results of my analysis of my graffiti corpora. I strongly recommend you read “Prelude to a graffiti analysis” first to understand the methodology, data, and sampling. You might also be interested in part 1, Arizona State University and part 2, University of Colorado [...]

Graffiti analysis part 2: University of Colorado – Boulder

This is the second in a five-part series of posts describing the results of my analysis of my graffiti corpora. I strongly recommend you read “Prelude to a graffiti analysis” first to understand the methodology, data, and sampling. You might also be interested in part 1, Arizona State University. An endearing hippie-town in the mountains [...]

Graffiti analysis part 1: Arizona State University

This is the first in a five-part series of posts describing the results of my analysis of my graffiti corpora. I strongly recommend you read “Prelude to a graffiti analysis” first to understand the methodology, data, and sampling. Located in a college town that seems to have neither a coffee house nor a bookstore (and [...]

Arizona State University: where literacy comes to die

Recent works of fiction, including Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, depict a future where traditional literacy has become a niche skill, and the general populace relies on simple symbols for written communication. An examination of the graffiti of Hayden Library at Arizona State University leaves one with the impression that such a scenario [...]

The Sexual Palimpsest of Brown University’s “Rock”

Brown University’s Rockefeller Library is reminiscent of UChicago’s Regenstein. They’re both rather ugly from the outside, they both have two basements, they both have nicknames (the “Rock” and “Reg”, respectively), and they’re both filled with graffiti mostly written in literate1 English. In just three hours combing through the study areas in the Rock stacks, I [...]

F(l)AGS ARE G(r)AY: socially acceptable homophobia

In the 1960′s, before the Regenstein Library was built, racism wasn’t hard to find in the graffiti written in Harper Library and elsewhere on campus. Today, it has been driven into the “private” space of men’s bathroom stalls, along with a number of other comments that would likely be censured by other graffiti-writers, if not [...]

The decline and fall of the B-level men’s room

It’s been about a month since I last wrote about the B-level men’s room (first post can be found here, last month’s update here, though I’ve been back a couple times since). The decline has begun: philosopher wordplay has descended into more penis drawings and an attempt to turn an anti-gay slur into a pun. [...]