Jordan McDonald

In the summer of 1980, art historian and critic Judith Wilson was commissioned by Essence magazine, a Black women’s publication founded in 1970, to conduct interviews with Black women visual artists working in the new decade. An Essence typescript memo in the Judith Wilson papers, dated September of the same year, shows a request for Wilson’s expertise in the formation of a list of Black women artists, a list that would be forwarded to none other than the multinational cosmetics powerhouse Re...

In the days before this year’s Green Key concert, The Dartmouth sat down with Eli Sones, one half of the LA-based DJ group Two Friends, best known for their extensive collection of “Big Bootie” mixes. A Los Angeles native and long-time music lover, Sones began pursuing music seriously while in high school and has continued evolving artistically ever since. Working alongside his childhood bestfriend and fellow DJ-Producer Matthew Halper — the other half of Two Friends — Sones has learned a lot...

In When I Get Home, Solange’s 2019 follow-up to her Grammy award-winning album A Seat at the Table, images of Black cowboys are intermixed with images of techno futures and the sprawling metropolis of Houston, Texas. Centering Blackness in the imagery of Southern rodeos, jockeying, and horseback riding, the visual album features Solange and an assortment of others in the aesthetic trappings of the Southwestern United States. In one scene,a sea of Black girls in a field wear white leotards, co...

What is now Dr. José Rizal Park, an outdoor space for the local Beacon Hill community in Seattle, Washington, was once a condemned land. Inaccessible to the public until it was acquired in 1971 by the City of Seattle Parks Department, the land would not be dedicated until 1979. Taking the name of Filipino nationalist Dr. José Rizal, an ophthalmologist-turned-anticolonial writer who was executed by the Spanish colonial government for sedition, the park would take on a political life of its own...

This year, Waka Flocka Flame, Two Friends and MAX will headline the Green Key concert. Read below for profiles on these artists — and what students should expect to see at the concert tonight.

Waka Flocka Flame
A few weeks ago, the College’s Programming Board announced that this year’s Green Key headliner is Atlanta-based rapper Waka Flocka Flame. If this name does not immediately register for you, here is what you need to know. Emerging onto the mainstream rap game in the early 2000s, Waka F...

On International Women’s Day, March 7, it was announced that Baby Phat, the urban women’s wear brand, and brainchild of Kimora Lee Simmons, that notoriously married denims with golds, rhinestones, and sequins, was scheduled to relaunch in the summer of 2019. If you may recall, fashion model, designer, and business mogul Kimora Lee Simmons owned the early aughts. As the founder and creative director of Baby Phat, Simmons earned a nation’s attention for her extravagant and hip-hop infused visio...

In 1974, twenty artists were invited by Howard University’s School of Engineering to submit design proposals for a sculpture contest. The winning work was to be featured on the historically Black university’s newly minted chemical engineering building. Of the eight artists who submitted sketches, seven finalists were invited to send in models or maquettes and present them to an art committee for approval. In the end of the two-year process, the decision came to a vote. Howard alumna and renow...

Since its discovery in the early 20th century, the bust of Nefertiti, a work of limestone and stucco crafted by the sculptor Thutmose around 1345 B.C.E., has cemented the ancient Egyptian queen’s relevance as a global pop-culture icon. The Nefertiti of the infamous sculpture dons her signature cap crown, an extravagant royal blue headdress with a golden diadem band and elaborate designs, which suggest a power embellished by an elegant aesthetic. Beneath it, her face—symmetrical, poised, and o...

In Hulu’s original comedy “Shrill,” a TV adaptation of Lindy West’s 2016 essay collection “Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman,” Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Bryant gets the spotlight she deserves as the lead character Annie Easton. An earnest writer in her late twenties, Annie is introduced to audiences as a charismatic dreamer stuck in a rut. After years and years of being demeaned or discounted for her appearance as a “fat” woman, she has come to her breaking point in her workplace and her love ...

Embracing the Loire River, Nantes sits on the western side of France, lodged in an estuary. Made possible by the Atlantic Ocean’s deliverance, it is a city that has known a coastal existence that it should have been denied. And with all its access, Nantes turned water into wealth. Over the course of three centuries, the trading of slaves kept the city rich and buoyant. From the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century, France would organize more than 4,220 slave trade expeditions to the coast of West Africa, the majority of which were led by the ships of Nantes. By 1817, when the trade was abo

When I first heard about “Grown-ish,” the spinoff of Freeform’s new hit “Black-ish,” I was excited to see a teenage black girl on TV in the same phase of her life that I find myself in now. Zoey Johnson and I have a few important things in common: We are both reluctant big sisters, college freshmen and black girls on the cusp of adulthood.
In the last few years, television viewers have been introduced to many black women on television, but Zoey is something different: a black girl on the prec...

In this issue, we explore questions of the natural and unnatural–our relationships to each other, our bodies, society, the environment surrounding us, and more. In this issue, we seek to challenge our perceptions of what is normal and how these ideas shape Black culture and our everyday lives within it.

In May of 2016, Carene Mekertichyan ’16 made her dream into a reality when her senior project, a production of the late Ntozake Shange’s Obie Award-winning play and choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf” was performed for the greater Dartmouth community. Shange, who passed away on Oct. 27 at the age of 70 after suffering health problems, made a significant impact on Mekertichyan since her first encounter with the playwright’s work in middle school....

In her 1987 article “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Black feminist theorist Hortense Spillers wrote that “the cost of Americanization, of equality, is to forget.” If this is so, what is the price paid for forgetting? After all, memory is an issue of national concern. Who and what we choose to honor with remembrance often reveals a society’s true foundation, and as factions form around some of America’s most controversial statues, we’re witness...

Airing in July this past summer, HBO’s “Sharp Objects,” an adaption of “Gone Girl” author Gillian Flynn’s book of the same name, sets out to remind its audience of what is unique to the identity of the Midwestern United States and what is possible within the supposedly limited format of the miniseries. Following the story of St. Louis Chronicle journalist Camille Preaker, played by Amy Adams, “Sharp Objects” takes its audience on the journey of an investigative reporter who must vanquish her ...