Why read Women of Discriminating Taste?

Book cover of Women of Discriminating Taste: White Sororities and the Making of American Ladyhood

Book description

Women of Discriminating Taste examines the role of historically white sororities in the shaping of white womanhood in the twentieth century. As national women’s organizations, sororities have long held power on college campuses and in American life. Yet the groups also have always been conservative in nature and inherently discriminatory,…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Women of Discriminating Taste as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jana Mathews

Author

I’m a self-professed history junkie, and this recent contribution to the history of white Greek life picks up more or less where Turk left off.

The most fascinating and important argument that this book makes is that white southern sororities fundamentally influenced the definition of femininity in the South in the mid-twentieth century.

Understanding how and why southern sororities constructed womanhood before the advent of social media goes a long way in explaining why sorority women at universities in Oregon and Minnesota look and act eerily like sorority women at Ole Miss and the University of Alabama.

From Jana's list on The best books to make you wish you joined a sorority or fraternity…or be glad you didn’t.