Goffman at Penn: Star presence, teacher-mentor, profaning jester

Abstract

This essay is based on my encounters with Erving Goffman as his student at Penn in the 1970s. It concerns Goffman's largely self-orchestrated "place" at Penn in various respects: his uneasy relationship with the Penn sociology department despite his academic fame; his disenchantment with "mainstream" sociology; his calibrated interactional style as a "profane jester," offset by his thoughtful seriousness as a mentor; his classroom deportment and no-nonsense teaching style. Goffman's casual classroom use of unseemly epithets is discussed as a pedagogical device for demonstrating the stigmatizing power of language. Goffman's suggestions for possible field-site studies contrast with his commentary on the current state of sociology and, by implication, his place in it. © 2013 Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. All rights reserved.