This article extends symbolic interactionist thought on authenticity and stigma allure into the context of higher education in the United States where the status of the humanities is contested. Our abductive analysis of twenty‐nine, semistructured interviews with undergraduates at an elite university reveals that selecting a humanities major has social costs. Yet the students who opt into these majors renegotiate ideologies, practices, and resources in ways that generate meaningful educational experiences. Navigating these problematic situations in which status is threatened enables the social production and personal aesthetic experience of authenticity. These findings add a new evidentiary basis to theory on stigma allure and, in doing so, demonstrate that when rhetorics of crisis collide with the late modern quest for authenticity voluntary stigma can become a powerful, if also unwieldy, resource.

While the existence of grade inflation in the American system of higher education is well documented, the argument that student entitlement drives this dynamic remains unproven. Drawing on an abductive analysis of twenty-nine in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted by undergraduate co-authors, this study addresses these questions: (1) How do undergraduates on one elite campus understand the meaning and function of the grades they have received in college and (2) Do these students think that grading practices impact their undergraduate learning experience, and if so, how? Our results show that entitlement is not a fixed generational attitude so much as a conditional sentiment that individual professor’s grading practices can either disarm or inflame. Our study extends qualitative inquiry on students’ perceptions of grades and develops a student-centered “peer-to-peer” method that can be applied to a wide range of other issues in the sociology of higher education.

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Social movements seeking to dismantle white supremacy within academia cast long-running debates over writing instruction in a new light. This conversation approaches these critiques as an opportunity for pedagogical reinvention. I put forward new theory that centers the social performance and psychological rewards of authenticity. I first review two essential literatures on writing instruction in sociology: (1) writing in the disciplines and (2) cultural rhetorics. This twinned review focuses on the values that inform curriculum design and how these biases and ideals shape instructors’ perceptions of student writing. I then apply research on authenticity to reflect on the self-formative challenges today’s undergraduates encounter and how these obstacles shape their relationship to learning. I argue that centering authenticity in writing instruction can help the discipline achieve its inclusive ideals because it enhances students’ sense of belonging in the discipline.