Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus »

Kathleen A. Bogle is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at La Salle University in Philadelphia.

Read the Gawker Review

Listen to her NPR Interview

The Sociology of "Hooking Up": Author Interview on Inside Higher Ed

Newsweek: Campus Sexperts

Hookup culture creates unfamiliar environment - to parents, at least

Hooking Up: What Educators Need to Know - An op-ed on CHE by the author

It happens every weekend: In a haze of hormones and alcohol, groups of male and female college students meet at a frat party, a bar, or hanging out in a dorm room, and then hook up for an evening of sex first, questions later. As casually as the sexual encounter begins, so it often ends with no strings attached; after all, it was 'just a hook up.' While a hook up might mean anything from kissing to oral sex to going all the way, the lack of commitment is paramount.

Hooking Up is an intimate look at how and why college students get together, what hooking up means to them, and why it has replaced dating on college campuses. In surprisingly frank interviews, students reveal the circumstances that have led to the rise of the booty call and the death of dinner-and-a-movie. Whether it is an expression of postfeminist independence or a form of youthful rebellion, hooking up has become the only game in town on many campuses.

In Hooking Up, Kathleen A. Bogle argues that college life itself promotes casual relationships among students on campus. The book sheds light on everything from the differences in what young men and women want from a hook up to why freshmen girls are more likely to hook up than their upper-class sisters and the effects this period has on the sexual and romanticrelationships of both men and women after college. Importantly, she shows us that the standards for young men and women are not as different as they used to be, as women talk about 'friends with benefits' and 'one and done' hook ups.

Breaking through many misconceptions about casual sex on college campuses, Hooking Up is the first book to understand the new sexual culture on its own terms, with vivid real-life stories of young men and women as they navigate the newest sexual revolution.

Publishers Weekly

Hooking-up" is the term du jour, connoting a wide range of consensual sexual activities, with no pretense of starting a relationship, between young, mostly college-age students. This study by Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at LaSalle University-based on 76 interviews with mostly white college students and recent graduates from 2001 to 2006-gives a wide range of voices and opinions on hooking-up culture. While there are few surprises (women are still, for the most part, subjected to a punishing sexual double standard)-Bogle is a smart interviewer and gets her subjects to reveal intimate and often embarrassing details without being moralizing. She interrogates her subjects about alcohol use, the relationship of gay and lesbian students to hook-up culture, and opting out of hook-up culture. Bogle's work is important because it offers a complex portrait of young people grappling the best way they know how with the sexual realities of a rapidly changing world. Although limited in scope, this evenhanded, sympathetic book on a topic that has received far too much sensational and shoddy coverage is an important addition to the contemporary literature on youth and sexuality. (Feb.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction     1
From Dating to Hooking Up     11
The Hookup     24
The Hookup Scene     50
The Campus as a Sexual Arena     72
Men, Women, and the Sexual Double Standard     96
Life after College: A Return to Dating     128
Hooking Up and Dating: A Comparison     158
Methodological Appendix     187
Notes     191
Bibliography     211
Index     221
About the Author     225