| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Bound by a Mighty Vow: Sisterhood and Women's Fraternities, 1870–1920. By Diana B. Turk. (New York: New York University Press, 2004. x, 245 pp. Cloth, $60.00, ISBN 0-81478275-2. Paper, $20.00, ISBN 0-8147-8282-5.)
Historians of women's organizations have been fairly united in their emphasis on the positive aspects of volunteerism for women's advancement, but they have skirted the awkward topic of sororities. Diana B. Turk has opened a Pandora's box by examining the origins of a women's group renowned for its adherence to stereotypical behaviors. A nonmember, she managed to access closed archival sources to survey the beginning years of undergraduate college sororities, then known as women's fraternities. She traces the development of the movement from the founding of Kappa Alpha Theta at Asbury College (now DePauw University) in 1875 through to 1920, by which time eighty thousand women had joined twenty national sororities, each with twenty to sixty chapters.	1
Turk urges readers to drop prejudice and recognize that the first generation of college women created sororities that functioned differently from the modern institution. In male-dominated academies, the small numbers of women students banded together to support each other to "make good" (p. 24) for themselves and for all womanhood. The top female students, with the highest grades, met weekly to amplify their curriculum with literary discussions. Unwelcome in most official campus extracurricular activities, they also enjoyed modest entertainments such as Halloween parties, taffy pulls, and dramatic skits. Turk places them in the feminist tradition, providing havens of sisterhood for pathbreakers in men's public sphere.	. . .

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