Taking mortarboard displays seriously as public performances of the personal, this book highlights the creative, playful, and powerful ways graduates use their caps to fashion their personal engagement with notions of self, community, education, and the unknown future.

Graduation season is upon us! We’re starting to see high schoolers and college grads descending on scenic spots around Las Vegas to take portraits — sometimes with elaborate additions to their stoles, gowns, and mortar board graduation caps.

For college students across the country, commencement formally marks the transition from student to graduate. Per tradition, most schools feature speakers, give out awards, organize departmental dinners – and, of course, designate caps and gowns for students to wear when they receive their diploma.

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It’s commencement season in Boston, a city that boasts almost 30 colleges and universities. On any given weekend, you’re almost as likely to catch a glimpse of someone wearing a cap and gown as you are to see a fan in a Red Sox hat. But the caps and gowns worn by graduates have a much longer history. In recent decades, caps even have become space for graduates to express their individuality.

"What happens in ... stays in ...."

BYU Radio/Top of Mind with Julie Rose: Commencement ceremonies are an exercise in uniformity. Seen from the front, the graduates are an indistinguishable sea dressed in identical caps and gowns. But look at a group of 2018 graduates from the back and their individuality shouts at you from the flat tops of their caps. Folklorist Sheila Bock has documented the rise of this graduation cap-decorating fad.

As images of college graduates walking across that stage in their caps and gowns have dominated our social media feeds over the last few weeks, you might have noticed a trend that’s taking off. Their graduation caps — those mortarboards sitting on top of their heads — are decorated.