Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged college

Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities

I learned a lot about Black Greek-letter organizations while reading Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities, specifically about the title sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA).

Stranger Here Below

Stranger Here Below tells the stories of three generations of women whose lives are connected by a single institution and a changing America. Amazing Grace “Maze” Jansen and Mary Elizabeth “M. E.” Cox meet at Berea College in Kentucky in 1961. Maze is a poor white mountain girl and M. E. is one of just a few African American students at the college. The young women come from difficult backgrounds and both have mothers who have struggled.

The Selves

Sonja Ahlers’ The Selves is a visual essay which combines collage, poetry, watercolor, calligraphy, prose and fabric. The result is a multi-layered and textured work that reveals something new every time you leaf through it. Although pastiche and mixed media immediately come to mind to describe Ahlers’ work, it may also be considered a new genre or a new way of looking at our lives as women in relation to mass media.

No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admissions and Campus Life

No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal is a thorough and accessible study of race- and class-based dynamics at elite American colleges and universities. Sociologists Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford report on the racial and class makeup of student populations at top U.S. schools at various stages of their college careers, and conclude with suggestions for closing the racial academic achievement divide in American society more broadly.

El Reflejo

Long Beach is unlike any other city in Southern California; it is a place where both million dollar homes and low-income housing co-exist within mere miles of each other, it is suburban and urban, it’s an oppressive, concrete jungle that happens to be surrounded by picturesque beaches, but most compelling, perhaps, is the eclectic mix of people that call the city home.

She Said, She Said (3/18/2009)

As a Wellesley alum, I am probably the perfect person to review Kathryn Chetkovich’s She Said, She Said, an intimate portrait of a group of friends who met at a women’s college and are now, years later, forced to contend with many of the sociopolitical issues they faced in the seventies. The triad of feminists, now in varying degrees, is shaken to the core when one of their own, Jamie (Shelley McPherson) reveals that her recent ex-husband Ross (Mark Hofmaier) has raped her.