Literature Review #1

To start off my research paper, I am first going to look at the history of fraternities and why they came about to be. I will be using the first chapter of the book The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities, written by Nicholas L. Syrett to give a general history of fraternities and what their purpose is. Nicholas L. Syrett is a professor at the University of Kansas who teaches in gender and sexuality studies which means he can be reliable when talking about the topics of adolescent young men. He also taught of years in the history department which means he must knowledge of research sources relating to the history of fraternities because he wrote a book on it. The reason I will only be using the first chapter is because I plan on having a positive perspective towards fraternities and if I use other parts of the book, it wouldn't be that helpful because it has more of a negative undertone.

To start off, the first ever fraternity, Kappa Alpha, was first introduced and organized by a group of college students at Union College in New York. A general idea that could be said was that they wanted to rebel against the social norms of college, which back then, was nothing. But as I read deeper into the text, an intriguing aspect that I found was that these group of 5 young men were recently discharged from the army and felt like they were missing something. "...feeling what was described by one as 'an aching void' left by the company's dissolution..." (Syrett 13). They needed, what I can deduct to be, a sense of belongingness in an place that was dull and lifeless because colleges back then did not offer much besides academics. Fraternities are just a group of young men socializing together, but what gave these organizations their true hidden meaning is what drove the college students to create them which to have an organization that separated them from others while offering them a sense of brotherhood that "...would vow to protect, honor and be loyal to him" (Syrett 15).

This will be very useful for my research question because since I will be writing about how fraternities offer ways to gain identity capital, it would be good to give a general background on the history as well as it's purpose to start my paper off.

Syrett, Nicholas L. The Company He Keeps: a History of White College Fraternities. University of North Carolina Press, 2009.