Board Member
Jonathan Michael Square is the Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design. Dr. Square was also a 2021-22 fellow in the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was previously a lecturer in the Committee on Degree in History and Literature at Harvard University.
The recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, Dr. Square’s work considers histories of enslavement through the lens of fashion, and his research appears in numerous scholarly and public-facing venues – such as Ms Magazine, Hyperallergic, Winterthur Portfolio, Small Axe, among others. Just to give you a brief glimpse at the range and texture of his work: Square has written on such topics as Harriet Tubman’s unacknowledged style, Brooks Brothers’ entwined history with slavery, Gee’s Bend quilts, the costumes in the Netflix film Passing, and the racial performance of CGI model Lil Miquela.
Dr. Square has also curated several exhibitions, including Slavery in the Hands of Harvard and solo show of the work of historian and artist Nell Irvin Painter. He currently has an exhibition at the Herron School of Art and Design titled Past Is Present: Black Artists Respond to the Complicated Histories of Slavery. He is also founder of the digital humanities project “Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom” – and is currently at work on a book project titled Negro Cloth: How Slavery Birthed the American Fashion Industry.