The American sorority girl recast: an ethnographic screenplay of leisure in context

Current research on women in sororities in the US offers only a myopic picture of the culture. The purpose of this post-structural feminist ethnography was to explore American sorority culture as one way to expose the complicated relationships between discourse and gendered performances of self. Using the representational strategy of an ethnographic screenplay, we illustrate how sorority women are constituted in relation to performances of femininity and expectations of appropriate “ladylike” behaviours. In doing so, we highlight the processes of gendered subjectivity and illustrate the ways that women are constituted within discourse within their lived leisure experience.