Greek History Reading Recommendation

Posted on February 13, 2009
Filed Under Media, Reading List | By Jessica Gross

Add this to your reading list: The Company He Keeps — a new book by Nicholas L. Syrett, available next month — traces the history of white frats from the post-Civil War days through the present. In an e-mail interview with Inside Higher Ed, Syrett gives some quotables about frat boys’ self-identification and ideas about gender.

On the role frats served in the antebellum years:

Fraternities were outlawed at almost all colleges and joining one was both a way of defying an authoritarian faculty that treated college students as if they were still children as well as a way for youthful men to claim a manly independence through breaking the rules, choosing their own friends, and asserting some form of control over their lives.


And on their role today:

The most obvious contribution is that the men who join them enjoy the camaraderie that they offer. This is particularly important for students who attend large and impersonal schools and might not know anyone when they arrive….The flaws are that they often encourage social snobbery; they can divide students into cliques and factions; and their exclusivity leads to disappointment on the part of those not asked to join.

For the full interview, go here.

(Photo courtesy of UNC Press)

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