Today the inaugural Mass marking the beginning of the academic year at Catholic U. took place, the first event in which I marched in procession as a faculty member. I very much enjoy the pageantry of this sort of thing, to say nothing of the doxological aspect. I have a liking for the heraldry of the event, with all the faculty in doctoral robes from a hundred different universities, the procession of a hundred concelebrating priests, the monks and nuns, austere but distinctive in the habits of their several orders. It's like a meeting of the Justice League of America, combined with the Avengers, but holier.
Unfortunately my own finery was completely borrowed, since I do not own the UCLA regalia. The Office of the Provost made some spare robes available, and mine was a plain black thing, although with the requisite three stripes and front panels of the Philosophiae Doctor. However, I regret to say that my borrowed hood proclaimed me only a Master. I am determined by the next convocation to acquire (somehow) the attractive plumage of the over-educated Bruin. But dang: it's expensive.
Tell me, readers who are faculty — do you have your own regalia? How in the world did you afford it? And what is your favorite academic costume? Or: Who has the worst?
5 comments:
As an Episcopal cleric who sometimes wears "office apparel" (cassock, surplice, tippet and hood)I know how expensive just a hood can be. Vanity made me buy a (chemistry) doctoral hood rather than the more modest M.Div. hoodie, but so it goes . . .
David Bailey
Calculate how many years you have to teach and how many times per year you will need to appear in regalia, multiply by the cost of rental, add a little in for vanity, and there you have it.
I was fortunate, my relatives bought me mine. With the Oxford DPhil, however, you never wear the hood at graduations, just at Evensong, etc. So as a priest I now get to wear the hood, which is disconcerting to my thoroughly protestant grandmother who bought it for me.
Also, the Oxford gown is open at the front, so I always have to wear "sub fusc" a dark suit and white tie. When living in New Orleans, this was a distinct disadvantage where my colleagues would wear shorts under their zip up gowns...
Thanks, I always wondered what subfusc meant.
The prettiest regalia are those of the Oxford Doctor of Music.
I have a Litt. D. from the University of Amsterdam, which has no degree gowns; so for all the years of my academic professional life I have worn the modest garb of an Oxford M.A.: a simple black gown with a red and black hood. And an ancient, ancient mortarboard, inherited from the first Master of my (Canadian) College.
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