"Wesleyan Class Traditions: The Ties That Bind Us" Guest Lecturer Brandi Simpson Miller, assistant director - Lane Center for Social and Racial Equity, Wesleyan College

Wesleyan sisterhood traditions are powerful, persistent and have been plagued with controversy since their inception in the early 19th century. Over the years, a series of false narratives was created, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to disguise the origins of class names in both the Klu Klux Klan epithet and imagery. These false narratives were perpetuated in class traditions by students who often had no direct knowledge about the foundations of those traditions in white sisterhood, defined here as the embracing of the Lost Cause narrative first delineated by author Edward Pollard in 1867.



Class traditions were enduring and powerful and remained a way for students to bond to each other and the institution, even as the iconography evolved. Despite the inherently divisive substratum embedded in class traditions, sisterhood traditions worked to bond new students to women who came before them and after them. The positive attributes of sisterhood, chief among them the forging of lifelong friendships, continue today. 

The event will take place March 28 from 4 until 5:30 p.m. in A&S 2-72.

Sponsored by the Center for Georgia Studies