New Article in Journal of Sorority and Fraternity Life Research and Practice

I am particularly excited about this new article about the ways in National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) women use alcohol as symbolic power to leverage relationships with fraternity men and reinforce hegemony within their chapters. This article is entitled “Brunch So Hard: Liquid Bonding and Unspoken Rules of Feminine Hegemony Through Alcohol Use Among National Panhellenic Conference Sorority Women” and appears in the most recent volume of the Journal of Sorority and Fraternity Life Research and Practice (formerly Oracle). This was co-authored with my colleagues Stacy Rowan (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and C. Kelsey Ryan (University of Memphis).

We used a poststructural feminist lens to interrogate their relationships with fraternity men and their chapter sisters to better understand how they use alcohol to reinforce these relationships. Participants were forthright and unabasted about their alcohol and drug use to differentiate themselves as sorority women. In particular, chapter leaders wielded the symbolic power of alcohol to co-construct a system of gendered hegemony which heavily socialized new members. They used alcohol use as a gendered instrument to transmit feminine norms and expectations. Salient study findings offer implications for practice about alcohol misuse and wellness related to supporting identity development and power relationships with fraternity men.