Soraya Nadia McDonald, cultural critic for The Undefeated, a website that explores the intersection of race, sports and culture, has been named winner of the 2019-20 .
The award committee cited the 鈥渁mbitious reach and bracing common-sense of her criticism鈥 in selecting McDonald for this year鈥檚 award. The committee comprises the heads of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton and Yale universities, and is administered by Cornell鈥檚 Department of English in the 麻豆视频 and 麻豆视频.
McDonald focuses on how the American theater engages 鈥 or fails to engage 鈥 the subject of race. In her reviews and articles about the 2018-19 season, the committee cited how McDonald probed her discomfort at the voluntary slavery enacted in 鈥淲hite Noise鈥 and 鈥淪lave Play鈥; indicted 鈥淭o Kill a Mockingbird鈥 for its reliance on 鈥渨hite saviors鈥 and 鈥渃artoon racists鈥; identified the constricting norms of black masculinity (and the resistant potential of music) in 鈥淐hoir Boy鈥; and located new work by Donja Love, Aleshea Harris and Patricia Ione Lloyd in the long history of plays about 鈥渢he overall cheapness of black life.鈥
The prize committee particularly praised McDonald鈥檚 review of 鈥淜ing Kong,鈥 marked, they wrote, 鈥渂y her characteristic sharpness and clarity,鈥 which zeroed in on the casting of a black actress as Ann Darrow 鈥 a choice few other critics noted and none studied as vigorously. In recalling how enthusiastically the 1933 film promoted stereotypes linking 鈥渁nimal savagery鈥 to 鈥渂lack male predation,鈥 and how important whiteness is to Darrow鈥檚 narrative function, McDonald pinpointed 鈥 and punctured 鈥 the incoherent post-racial fantasy of this new version, the committee wrote.
鈥淐haracters can be racialized, or they can be raceless, but they can鈥檛 be both,鈥 McDonald wrote. 鈥淭he audience is asked to see Darrow as simply a lady and Kong as a tortured circus spectacle of an animal. But taking in 鈥楰ing Kong鈥 without some twinge of ethical compromise requires either Magritte-level mental acrobatics or complete ignorance of the role of race in American history.鈥
was endowed by George Jean Nathan (1882-1958), a prominent theater critic who published 34 books on the theater and co-edited (with H.L. Mencken) two influential magazines 鈥 The Smart Set and The American Mercury. Nathan graduated from Cornell in 1904; as a student, he served as editor of The Cornell Daily Sun and the humor magazine The Cornell Widow. of Nathan鈥檚 papers, correspondence, books, and related artifacts are held in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in the Cornell University Library.
Previous winners include Sara Holdren, Jill Dolan, Randy Gener, Alisa Solomon, Ben Brantley, Elinor Fuchs, Hilton Als, Cornell professor H. Scott McMillin, John H. Muse and Helen Shaw.
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