When the state of Tennessee introduced legislation to ban drag and “adult cabaret performances” last March, Mount Holyoke College alumna Melissa Stewart FP ’19 knew she needed to stop the ban. Stewart and her co-counsel at Donati Law filed a temporary restraining order against the state of Tennessee, preventing the law from taking effect until midnight of June 2, 2023.
Now that the 2023 school year has ended, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s year as Interim President is complete. After a long career at Mount Holyoke College, she will assist president-elect Danielle R. Holley’s transition this July before returning to Atlanta “to retire again.”
In honor of Dr. Tatum’s service to Mount Holyoke, the Board of Trustees dedicated the Blanchard Hall Unity Center to her during a ceremony on May 5. She recalls it being “a delightful surprise!”
I am currently living in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where taps in some parts of the city have been inconsistently shut on and off by the city government for over two weeks. Throughout my time here I have become well aware of the water crisis in Central Asia, especially in Western Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, where the infamous Aral Sea is a mere puddle of what it used to be.
However, I was not expecting a water shortage to hit the capital for quite some time, and certainly not this summer.
Growing Vines, a student-led collective at Mount Holyoke College, has been gaining traction since its formation in 2020. The group was founded by students driven by a shared passion for environmental justice and food sovereignty. Initially, the group focused on creating a collective, but as the pandemic began, they took a pause to revitalize and strategize.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder visited the Odyssey Bookshop on April 18 to speak on his newest book “Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People,” published in Jan. 2023 by Random House. The novel details Dr. O’Connell’s life’s work: creating a healthcare program for the homeless community in Boston, Massachusetts.
Karla Biery ’23, a critical social thought major and Spanish minor, is always thinking about “how our communities are built … and the ways that they’re split up.” Throughout her three years at Mount Holyoke, Biery has taken a combination of dance, art, religion and Spanish courses, eventually deciding to major in CST with a focus on how people connect with one another, as well as what divides them.
The Five College Film Festival returned for the first time in person since 2019, featuring screenings of films made by students and recent graduates of the Five Colleges on April 1, 2023, at Amherst College. An awards ceremony was subsequently held, in which two Mount Holyoke students were awarded prizes. Ayu Suryawan ’23 won Best Documentary Prize for their film “Loving, Moving Boy” and Olive Rowell ’24 won Best in College for Mount Holyoke with their film “Photo Album.”
On Friday, April 7, students, faculty and staff gathered in Hooker Auditorium to listen to Mei Lum ’12, the keynote speaker for Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. While AANHPI Heritage Month is usually celebrated in May, Mount Holyoke celebrates it in April while students are still on campus. This year’s theme is “Rewriting the Narrative.” The goal is to fight against Asian hate and emphasize the achievements, resilience and joy of the AANHPI community.
Over the last 100 years, the Mount Holyoke College English department has invited college-aged poets and professional poet judges to the College to participate in the Glascock poetry contest. This year the judges — poets Hoa Ngyuen, Eileen Myles and Evie Shockley — split the prize and awarded it to Dartmouth College senior Tom Bosworth and Pratt Institute senior Portlyn Houghton-Harjo.
On March 29, the department of film, media and theater hosted a screening of the film “Where the Pavement Ends,” followed by a student-moderated discussion with filmmakers Jane Gillooly and Khary Saeed Jones. “Beginning with a 1960s roadblock that divided then-white Ferguson from black Kinloch, the film depicts a micro-history of race relations in America.”
As a part of Building On Our Momentum Community Day, on March 28, 2023, Gaye Theresa Johnson gave the inaugural lecture for the critical race and political economy department. Johnson is the author of multiple books and an associate professor at UCLA, teaching courses in the departments of African American studies and Chicana/o studies. She specializes in topics of cultural history, spatial politics, race, racism and political economy.
Newbury, a senior at Suffolk who is majoring in English with a creative writing concentration and a minor in philosophy, says that he has been interested in poetry since the age of thirteen thanks to Savannah Brown, who posted her poetry on Youtube when Newbury came across it. Poetry with a “tragic element” also inspires Newbury, who cites Plath and Keats as other inspirations for the way he writes his poetry.
On March 2, the Odyssey Bookshop hosted Lydia Moland, author of “Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life,” published in October 2022 by the University of Chicago Press. Moland, a professor of philosophy at Colby College, provided a brief but comprehensive overview of Child’s work as an active proponent of abolition in the 19th century.
Thomas Bosworth, a senior at Dartmouth College, always knew that he wanted to be a writer. He never expected to become a poet, but after taking a creative writing class he “was bitten by the [poetry] bug and couldn’t stop” discovering new passions and interests through his craft. Now, his work has made him a contestant in the 100th annual Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Competition.
Photo courtesy of Jonathan Michael Square.
Jonathan Michael Square, above, talked to Sandra Russell’s gender studies and art class on Zoom.
By Jesse Hausknecht-Brown ’25
Managing Editor of Layout & Features Editor
Content warning: This article mentions slavery.
Jonathan Michael Square, an assistant professor of Black visual culture at Parsons School of Design, believes in “democratizing higher education.” His avenue of doing so was to turn one of his classes, Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom, into an ever-evolving social media-based project. He uses social media platforms — including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube — to share the work he has done around slavery and fashion, which he believes allows for more engagement than traditional styles of teaching. Square visited Professor Sandra Russell’s class Art, Public Space and Social Justice Activism via Zoom on Wednesday, Feb. 22.
As described on its website, “Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom predominately explores the intersections between slavery and fashion. This digital humanities project is also an entry point for exploring larger questions of race, identity and equity.” During the talk, Square defined digital humanities as “the use of the internet or digital platforms as an educational tool,” although he stated that the kind of work he does is “a little more dynamic” than traditional digital humanities practices.
“Sometimes you have to use terms to make yourself legible to academics, so sometimes we find ourselves using the term digital humanities even though it’s more social media,” Square said.
Russell has wanted to have Square talk to one of her classes for some time, but the timing never worked out. She has been inspired by Square’s work for years and was grateful that he was able to visit.
“One of my goals in designing this course was to foreground artists, academics and activists’ utilization of public spaces — be they brick and mortar, digital or otherwise — to engage audiences’ political, social and historical imaginations,” Russell said. “Jonathan’s work across digital platforms, as well as his curatorial work, does exactly this, and I think this is a real way to build solidarity and resistance.”
In an interview with Mount Holyoke News, Square explained that he is usually asked to present research from his upcoming book and doesn’t often get to give a talk about his methodologies. “I love presenting my work to new audiences because it forces me to clarify my thinking on my own practice,” Square said. “It was a real treat to be able to stand back and reflect on how I use social media as an educational tool.”
Square was also a 2021-2022 Curatorial fellow at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and formerly instructed at Harvard University, where he taught versions of the Fashioning the Self course.
“Fashioning the Self” also exists in the format of two zines, one of which can be viewed online. The other is available for purchase in print. “I also have a bone to pick with academia. I think academic writing is a bit dry and sometimes inaccessible and many academics aren’t really interested in engaging with larger audiences,” Square said. “I wanted to create content that to me felt academically rigorous but was also interesting and readable and even fun.”
Madeline Greenberg ’26, a student in Russell’s class, enjoyed the content of Square’s talk and described his work as “incredible.”
“Square also has his course syllabi available on his website, so anyone is able to almost take the class themself,” Greenberg said. “This aspect of his work is incredibly interesting to me as it feels like we learn right alongside him and that his work is pushing against traditional and elitist ideas of higher education.”
Siobhan Meï ’11, a lecturer at Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, also visited the class during Square’s talk. She and Square co-founded a digital humanities project called “Rendering Revolution: Sartorial Approaches to Haitian History,” which is, as described on its website, “a queer, bilingual, feminist experiment in digital interdisciplinary scholarship that uses the lens of fashion and material culture to trace the aesthetic, social and political reverberations of the Haitian Revolution as a world-historical moment.”
Meï first conceptualized “Rendering Revolution” and then shared her idea with Square when she invited him to give a talk at UMass. They then began to work together to create the project which launched in summer 2020.
In his interview with Mount Holyoke News, Square described “Rendering Revolution” and “Fashioning the Self” as “sister projects,” with three important differences. “‘Rendering Revolution’ is focused on Haiti and, to a certain degree, the wider Francophone world. Secondly, ‘Rendering Revolution’ is supported by a transnational team of scholars that includes Siobhan, me, and a number of other Haitian and Haitianist academics and translators. Thirdly, ‘Rendering Revolution’ is a bilingual project. We publish all of our content in English and Haitian Kreyòl,” Square said.
During the talk, Square discussed the curatorial work he does, focusing specifically on an exhibit called “Slavery in the Hands of Harvard” which was housed in the Center for Government and International Studies at Harvard. Square talked about how using a non-traditional space forced people to engage with the work between activities or on their way to class.
“The show used contemporary art to explore Harvard’s connection to slavery. … The exhibition was in the hallway of a public building on Harvard’s campus … so it had a wider reach than a show in a traditional gallery space,” Square said.
Toward the end of the talk, students and participants joining on Zoom were invited to ask questions. One person on the Zoom call, who identified themself as a professor based in Florida, asked Square about the trend of race-related scholarship being politically repressed. “The study of Black history is underfunded and under assault, which certainly makes my work feel more necessary,” Square said in his interview.
Greenberg had an interest in fashion and social justice prior to the talk but hadn’t been sure how they could work together. “I had actually been discussing with my parents how on earth I plan to combine those interests. It seemed that I was trying to bridge an impossible gap but once I started learning about Jonathan Michael Square I realized that there is a world of possibility for the combination of fashion and social justice,” Greenberg said. “I am thrilled that the gender studies department hosted his visit and I look forward to following his work in the future through Instagram and Facebook.”
“Once I started learning about Jonathan Michael Square I realized that there is a world of possibility for the combination of fashion and social justice.
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Russell’s only wish was for more time, given that not all the participant’s questions got answered. She was also grateful for the hybrid model which allows for people to visit a classroom space who may not otherwise be able to.
“I see Jonathan’s work as such a generous and hopeful way of reimagining and re-rendering ideas and histories. Part of the challenge of doing transformative intellectual work involves telling better, more accurate — and thus more liberatory — stories. This means finding ways to decenter hegemonic narratives and center the experiences of those who have been historically marginalized, silenced and erased. Jonathan’s work does exactly this,” Russell said. “By bringing it to wider audiences, I see him creating and co-creating powerful spaces for community, liberation and worldmaking.”
