Jesus because of the delightful prose and enter- taining subject matter. It is intellectually engaging and great fun. Prothero’s work is appropriate for scholars of popular culture and religion as well as useful for presenting American religious history and one of the field’s longstanding debates to un- dergraduates. American Jesus might prove to be an appropriate text or recommended reading for courses in American cultural or religious history. —Kelly J. Baker Florida State University Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Co-Education in the Ivy League Gina Barreca. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2005. Babes in Boyland is a warm, wise, and funny account of the author’s experiences at Dartmouth College in the early years of coeducation. As the first generation college student from a working- class family, entering freshman Regina Barreca (Dartmouth ‘79) feels intimidated when her father drops her off in Hanover. In her eyes, all the other freshman girls look like Grace Kelly or Gwyneth Paltrow. Furthermore, an alarming number of cars dropping off students bear rear window stickers reading ‘‘Loomis Chaffee’’ or ‘‘St. Paul’s’’ or ‘‘Brearly.’’ Her father’s reaction to her panic is laconic: ‘‘You can always take the next bus home’’ (35). Like Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl, young Barreca’s self-deprecating humor (‘‘I looked pret- ty fetching in a sleazy, barmaid way’’), her intel- ligence and her willingness to march onward against daunting odds ensure her social and aca- demic success. She not only develops close friends at Dartmouth, she realizes that once she and her girlfriends can laugh at the men of Dartmouth they are well on their way to ‘‘colonizing the place’’ (54). Second-wave feminists have long recognized the importance of race, class and gender in allo- cating power in society. Barreca makes subtle note of these themes throughout her narrative. For this reader, Babes is less about one young woman’s ex- perience in the early days of coeducation at Dart- mouth than it is about one young woman’s coming of age as a feminist. Dartmouth in the 1970s was important merely because of its function as a bas- tion of privilege and patriarchy rather than because of anything intrinsic to the institution itself. For readers too young to have seen Animal House (1968), a film based loosely on one of the screen- writer’s experiences at Dartmouth, the following line from Babes captures the masculist attitude greeting Barreca on campus: ‘‘Somebody explained to me that on this campus ‘‘they think you’re a ‘faggot’ if you like women more than beer’’ (47). Dartmouth provides fertile ground for the growth of a young feminist. Barreca is embarrassed when her American literature professor announces he is teaching Moby Dick, a novel about a sperm whale, and he is not going to change his ways be- cause there might be a ‘‘delicate flower whose fem- inine sensibilities I might offend’’ (42). But she learns to retaliate with humor. When another pro- fessor addresses his questions to the women in the class as ‘‘Miss so-and-so, as a woman, what is your reading of this text?’’ she responds by prefacing her answers to all questions with the phrase ‘‘as a woman’’ (47). She thinks ‘‘as a woman,’’ Shake- speare means thus and such. ‘‘As a woman,’’ she decides that she’ll have meatloaf for dinner. Humor and increased self-awareness empower Barreca. Once horrified by the term ‘‘feminist,’’ she comes to realize that the male notion of a feminist as a humorless, earnest woman is false. She devel- ops her own definition: ‘‘I’d say any time a woman breaks through a barrier set by society, she’s mak- ing a feminist gesture of some sort. And every time a woman laughs out loud—any time a woman makes a noise that isn’t a whimper or a cooing sound—she’s breaking down a barrier’’ (51). Babes in Boyland will appeal to cultural historians, feminists and the general reader. Laugh-aloud funny, Barreca’s history documents the heroic journey of a 1970s Everygirl who fights 64 The Journal of American Culture  Theme Issue  Volume 29, Number 1  March 2006