HIST 389 – Boys’ Clubs: From Freemasons to Frats

This course studies the history of "boys’ clubs"—institutions composed exclusively of or dominated by men—from the early modern period to the present. We begin in early modern Europe where religious confraternities and craft guilds bonded men together as “brothers” through ritual. We will then explore how eighteenth-century clubs and societies such as the freemasons appropriated these practices and spread them around the world through imperial expansion. The final part of the course surveys the histories of modern men’s organizations that have emerged from these fraternal traditions, including college fraternities, militaries, sports teams, and the Ku Klux Klan. Along the way, we will draw on tools from gender history and queer and feminist theory to examine how boys’ clubs have reinforced—and sometimes contested—systems of power, including gender, race, class, sexuality, and imperialism. Students will conduct original research and write an ebook chapter on a fraternal organization of their choice. At the end of the semester, we will compile the chapters and collectively edit the ebook to craft our own genealogy of boys’ clubs in the modern world.