All Subjects: Sorority
All Subjects: Greek
All Subjects: Media
Feminist Organization or Social Club?: The Impact of Sorority Life on the Collegiate Woman
This paper looks at the impact sorority life has on the collegiate women at Arizona State University. Much of the content widely available regarding members of the Greek community is relatively negative and describes these organizations through a critical lens.…
This paper looks at the impact sorority life has on the collegiate women at Arizona State University. Much of the content widely available regarding members of the Greek community is relatively negative and describes these organizations through a critical lens. Finding this content to be contrary to that of my own experience, I sought to analyze the effects the community had, specifically the effects of the sororities and sorority women at Arizona State University. The analysis began with a thorough review of the history of fraternities and sororities, as well as a short overview of the history of feminism. Through the examination of this data, it becomes clear that the foundations of sororities are directly correlated with feminist aims and the feminist movement. After completing a review of their foundation, a trifold analysis of today's sororities was conducted. First, eight studies on the impact of the fraternal and sororal organizations on their members were reviewed, compared, contrasted. Next, a comprehensive survey was sent out to the Arizona State sorority members receiving 273 responses that were analyzed both holistically and from specific angles. Lastly, a brief follow-up interview of 25 of those 273 women was done in order to get more in depth responses and opinions from the women in this community. Combining the knowledge and results garnered from the literature review, survey, and interviews, it can be concluded that contrary to popular media, sorority life, for the most part, does in fact empower the women within it and provide a beneficial impact to both the member and the community at large.
Golisch, Allison (Author)
Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director)
Burke, Alison (Committee member)
W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor)
Analysis of Representations of Fraternity and Sorority Life in Media
This analysis aimed to understand how and why certain representations of fraternity and sorority life are consistently used in media texts. Throughout this thesis I analyzed various media including films, a television series, a documentary, and coverage of a news…
This analysis aimed to understand how and why certain representations of fraternity and sorority life are consistently used in media texts. Throughout this thesis I analyzed various media including films, a television series, a documentary, and coverage of a news story and found that fraternity and sorority representations reinforce different social issues. Additionally, this thesis discusses how fraternities and sororities are framed in the media texts as institutions which force members to abide by larger societal norms and gender roles. Stigmas and social issues surrounding fraternity and sorority life including hazing, violence, and toxic masculinity, femininity and feminism, diversity and racism, and partying, power and misogyny are the focus of many of the media used in this study. This thesis analyzed how media use these topics to generalize representations of fraternity and sorority life members and to perpetuate normalized gender roles and dominant narratives about race and sexuality.
Lockhart, Christine (Author)
Himberg, Julia (Thesis director)
Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member)
Department of English (Contributor)
Department of Marketing (Contributor)
Barrett, The Honors College 70
Arizona State University 18
School of International Letters and Cultures 14
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication 13
School of Politics and Global Studies 12
Department of Marketing 10
Computer Science and Engineering Program 5
Dove-Viebahn, Aviva 5
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice 5
School of Social Transformation 5
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm 5
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Comm 5
Department of English 4
Himberg, Julia 4
Hugh Downs School of Human Communication 4
Ingram-Waters, Mary 4
Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business 3
Dombrowski, Rosemarie 3
Munson, Olivia 3
Sorority 2
Fraternity 1