Unique among college companies for its faculty-staff collaboration, Sock and Buskin was formed in 1901 by English Professor Tom Crosby, Class of 1894. The name derived from the Greek dramatic genres: Comedy (represented by the soccus, a slipper-like shoe) and Tragedy (represented by the buskin, a laced half-boot). The all-male Sock and Buskin would combine with the all-female Komians (founded the same year and named for Comus, the god of revelry) in the 1940s.