\"Solidarity in Sisterhood?\" explores how female-identifying college students seek community in sororities and implicitly shape definitions of womanhood while interacting with the institution's legacy of whiteness. I examine the effects of the stereotype of sorority membership in the present day through comparisons between so-called \"traditional\" sororities and the object of my study, referred to as Tau Alpha Beta (TAB), the only sorority at its university. I analyze how TAB members negotiate differing definitions of the organization as a \"diverse\" space and a \"social\" space to determine the sorority's impact on its members, particularly as it establishes its first Diversity and Inclusion Committee (DI-CO). Through ten interviews with current members, disaffiliated members, and alumni, observations of weekly chapter meetings and DI-CO meetings, as well as various surveys, \"Solidarity in Sisterhood?\" highlights how a rhetoric of sameness can muffle inner tensions concerning the direction of the organization and the nature of the relationships within. The legacy of whiteness in particular, situated in a historically exclusive organization within a primarily white higher education institution, looms over conversations of what sisterhood entails and what sororities stand for, including the question of whether their continued existence in and of itself is unjust. My critique utilizes the framework of bell hooks' concept of sisterhood as political solidarity and Audre Lorde's concepts of interdependency and self-definition in their critiques of white feminist groups. I also call upon Lisa Handler's position that sororities serve as a strategy for gender construction, wherein a limiting definition of womanhood is reified because the institution's history lives on through its image and actions. Internal tensions and failure to address privilege can threaten the organization's continuation - however, there is potential in the word 'sisterhood' for an intersectional feminist rebirth, where sisterhood means challenging and supporting one another through differing struggles, rather than a means of reaching individual social and economic success.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Feminism","Greek life"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 24088