Jonathan Michael Square discusses ‘democratizing higher education’

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.
”

— Madeline Greenberg '26

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.”

Glascock contestant Jordan Trice discusses his writing career and inspirations

Amherst junior Jordan Trice will compete in the 100th annual Glascock poetry contest. Photo courtesy of Shana Hansell.

By Jesse Hausknecht-Brown ’25

Managing Editor of Layout & Features Editor

Jordan Trice, a junior at Amherst College, can’t remember a time when he “didn’t do lots of bad writing.” Since starting the practice in childhood, he has worked on his craft more and more, recently gaining a spot as a contestant in the 100th Glascock poetry contest.

As described on the website, the “Kathryn Irene Glascock Intercollegiate Poetry Contest is the oldest continuously-running poetry contest for undergraduate students in the United States.” Mount Holyoke College hosts the contest every year, and since the second year of the competition, the Glascock committee has invited other colleges to join.

This year, Amherst College is one of the invited schools with Trice chosen as their representative. A creative writing professor that Trice had taken a class with during his first semester at college emailed him and asked if he would like to do it. “I was like, ‘Yes, of course.’ And then they put me in contact with y’alls people,” Trice said. “And here we are.”

Trice described later researching the contest and seeing that Robert Frost had been a judge and Slyvia Plath had won; this was when he started to become both excited and nervous about the competition.

One moment in particular stood out to Trice in regard to his interest in writing. When he was in sixth grade, a class required everyone to create a presentation about what job they wanted to have when they were older. “I put, kind of as a cop-out because I didn’t really prepare, [that] I wanted to be a writer,” Trice said. “They want[ed] you to have how much money you’d make, so I said ‘it varies’ and then had a picture of books.”

Trice, a double major in English and sexuality, women’s and gender studies, tends to write shorter poems and submitted a number of poems within the time limit. The first two are inspired by his first summer at Amherst when he had a research fellowship looking at “reimaginings of the stories of the women of the Odyssey in contemporary literature.” He was “obsessed” with Penelope, Odysseus’ wife who remains faithful to her husband while he is away on his 20-year-long journey, and was inspired to write.

“I ended up writing a couple of poems, Penelope-inspired poems, I call them my Penelope poems, but those are the opening ones,” Trice said.

In general, Trice draws inspiration from art, whether it be literature, paintings or music. He describes small moments of inspiration and credits Toni Morrison for “[bringing] out a lot of those moments.” 

Additionally, he has a habit of writing poetry on planes. His family lives in Tampa Bay, Florida, and every time he gets on a plane to fly home, he ends up writing. “I’ve been trying to tease out why that is but I think it’s partly because I’m listening to music and I have nothing else to do to distract me, no [cell] service or anything,” Trice said. “It’s just whatever music I’ve downloaded on my phone and then I’ll be listening to something and then it’ll just come.”

 Trice explained that some of his favorite writers are Toni Morrison, Allen Ginsberg, Maya Phillips — whose poetry collection “Erou,” Trice described as “possibly my favorite poetry collection at the moment” — and Evie Shockley, who is one of the 2023 Glascock judges and who Trice saw read at Amherst during the fall of 2022. 

“I’ve been moving in between excited and nervous,” Trice said. “But I think right now I’m feeling excited for [the contest]. I’m excited to meet the other people [and] to meet Evie Shockley again. It seems like a great time and it’s the 100-year anniversary so it sounds like it’s gonna be a very, very fun time.”

Mark Auslander discusses family history, antisemitism and racism

Dan Pagis’ poem entitled “Written in pencil in the sealed freight car,” which he wrote when he was 11 years old, is displayed in English, Hebrew, and Polish at the Belzec Victims Memorial. Photo courtesy of Mark Auslander.

By Emma Quirk ’26 

Staff Writer

Content warning: This article discusses the Holocaust.

Dr. Mark Auslander gave a lecture entitled “Here in this Train Car: Holocaust Family Memory, Art-Making and Struggles for Justice” on Feb. 15, 2023. During the event — held virtually — he discussed his family’s history and the connectivity between marginalized communities. He also explored the impact and importance of the arts when it comes to culture and tragedy.

Auslander is a sociocultural and historical anthropologist, award-winning author of “The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of Race and Finding an American Family” and visiting lecturer in anthropology at Mount Holyoke College. 

This event is one of MHC’s antisemitism teach-ins that were launched in January of 2021. In her introduction to Dr. Auslander’s event, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Kijua Sanders-McMurtry said that the College community has been “engaged in deep dialogues and interrogation of our own everyday work to disrupt and resist antisemitism,” for several years. 

Auslander’s talk, held during Black History Month, touched on the similarities and linkages between antisemitism and anti-Black racism. Auslander also discussed the way white supremacist ideology harms both of these communities as well as the intersections between them. 

The lecture began with Auslander speaking about his own family, particularly their experiences in the Holocaust. “Here in this Train Car” is a reference to “a terrifying moment in my family’s history,” where thousands of Romanian Jewish people, including his relatives, were forced onto cattle cars during a mass deportation to Transnistria concentration camps in the 1940s, Auslander explained. His father’s first cousin, Dan Pagis, was 11 years old at the time. 

Pagis wrote a now famous poem about the car, called “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freightcar.” The poem goes as follows: “Here in this carload / I, Eve / with my son Abel. / If you see my older boy, / Cain, the son of man, / tell him that I” — Auslander explained that it can provide different messages for readers. 

“The text I’d like to suggest can be read in part as a powerful testimony of what it means to be Jewish in a post-Holocaust world. … Even in places of relative sanctuary, the possibilities of mass violence never seen entirely removed or off the table. … But at the same time, the poem … emphasizes the universality of the story of brothers,” Auslander said. 

Auslander explained that neither Pagis nor his grandparents “[ever] discussed with anyone what transpired on board those terrible unheated trains … the poem is the only trace we have whatsoever.”

He is inspired by the way his cousin has fought for peace and justice and wishes to do the same. Art is a way to share, connect people and remember historical moments, both benevolent and malevolent. Auslander explained that it is vital in both “helping us reflect on unspeakable acts and struggles for tolerance and justice even or especially with the darkest walls of the sealed railway car,” but it can also remind us of “this world before the Holocaust.” The people, places and things that existed before are still important memories and aspects of culture. 

Another notion that Auslander emphasized was the close tie between the fight against antisemitism and anti-Black racism, and that one of the ways to combat this struggle is through partnership. He shared an anecdote of his connection to Black poet, storyteller and essayist André Le Mont Wilson who gave his own book talk to MHC on Feb. 20, 2023. Auslander explained that the two found connections between their own family histories, and have since been “working together collaboratively, documenting [their] respective family narratives to a writing project that [they] hope to be a book.”

While there is a lot of tragedy in the history of the Jewish people, there is good that can be pulled out of it in the ability to empathize with and support others who are fighting for their own liberation, especially those who have experienced a similar nature of historical oppression. 

“The very essence of our beings is not entirely grim or hopeless, which may seem paradoxical, but it’s the paradox that is life-sustaining. Because this experience can yield the most remarkable gifts, as is the case, for example, with my new friendship with André Wilson,” Auslander said.

Throughout his talk, Auslander spoke with candor about his privilege as a white man, and how he is working to better understand communities of color, particularly Black communities. 

“I’m not joking when I’m speaking [of] myself as a recovering white guy, because I mean, I grew up in Washington, D.C., but I grew up in white Washington, D.C., and I knew very little of the Black majority city, even though my parents [and] grandparents and so forth, had been actively involved in the civil rights movement,” Auslander said. “I didn’t think of the centrality of race or anything like structural racism in other words, and so that was a process.” 

In living in Central Africa for some years, connecting with his Black family members and with people like Wilson, he is working to combat his personal biases. He stressed that he believes this type of work is “a continuous process of learning.”

Toward the end of the talk, Sanders-McMurtry highlighted the work that the Jewish Student Union, the Association of Pan-African Unity and the Office of Community and Belonging have been doing to foster dialogue on campus. They then asked Auslander to discuss a bit more about the “importance of these ongoing efforts to bring groups together.” 

He replied that interpersonal work is vital, but it is only the start. “It has to be sustainable, there really has to be groups working together, and everybody knowing that there’s gonna be a space when these groups come together for frank disagreements and discovery,” Auslander continued. “It’s very hard work to do this type of collaborative work because we are all exposing our most fundamental vulnerabilities. And it doesn’t seem fair to each party that we’re being asked to account for things that we don’t feel personally held [responsible] for. But we can’t make progress if all we do is go into a defensive crouch.” 

One student who attended the talk appreciated this appeal for intergroup collaboration and the candor about inevitable obstacles. “I am a prospective history major so I think it is so important to, as Dr. Auslander discussed, push through the friction that arises when two very different groups work together and have conversations that deepen compassion and spark change,” Caroline Lamb ’26 said. “It is vital to future generations, and current ones, to work together and learn from our past mistakes so that we can all better understand that we share one world and can make it a better place.” 

Auslander believes that students, faculty and staff must all put in consistent effort to do their parts to make change. “We’re extremely lucky that at a place like Mount Holyoke, there are so many people committed to making this happen, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy here, it just means that we have the freedom and the space to do some of the really hard work,” Auslander said.