Carolina Weatherall

This past week, the Bowdoin German Department welcomed Dr. Natasha A. Kelly to campus. A curator, artist, filmmaker, theater director, professor and bestselling author of 13 books, Kelly is the premier Afro-German scholar in Germany and currently a professor of cultural studies at the Berlin University of Arts. The visit was organized in collaboration with the Africana studies,  theater and dance, cinema studies and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies departments, along with the Blythe Bickel Edwards Fund and the Black Student Union.

Kelly’s visit to the College included a screening of her art documentary, a lecture and a series of class visits considering the overall theme of Afro-German art and culture.Visiting Assistant Professor of German Rebecca Jordan spearheaded the process of bringing Kelly to campus.

“I thought this would be something not only interesting for Bowdoin students, but something that [centers topics] Bowdoin students don’t normally interact with, specifically Afro-German culture, even Afro-German identity,” Jordan said.

In an email to the Orient, Assistant Professor of German Richmond Embeywa emphasized  the interdisciplinary value of Kelly’s life and work.

“Dr. Kelly’s work facilitates critical dialogue across different fields and contexts.… Her visit to Bowdoin naturally resonates with several other departments and programs beyond German,” Embeywa wrote.

Kelly focused her visit on connecting students, faculty and the public to Afro-German identity.

“I hope that there’s an understanding that Blackness in itself is diverse and at the same time that Germany is diverse and that Black German identity is an entity. So it’s not additive; it’s not Black plus German, but its own culture has also grown over the past 400 years. So, there have been Black people living in Germany forever, and this also becomes part of common sense and academic knowledge. But in both curricula, if we’re looking at Black Studies or Africana Studies, or if we’re looking at German studies, we and our histories are not left out,” Kelly said.

This central focus on the scholarly conversations around Afro-German identity was clear as Kelly joined Embeywa’s class.

“In engaging with Dr. Kelly’s work, students begin to understand the importance of institutionalizing Black knowledge and appreciate how far back Black German history goes…. With this knowledge, students can debunk the myth that Blackness in Germany was solely an American import,” Embeywa wrote.

The first public event featuring Kelly was a screening of her art documentary “Milli’s Awakening,” commissioned for the 2018 Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. The film centers around the experience of Afro-German women in art.

“My documentary is an interview with eight Black German artists, and what I wanted to highlight was the continuity of Black German feminism or Black feminism in Germany,” Kelly said. “Being a professor at the University of Arts, the film is [also] about creating space in the arts for Black women. It’s about showing our differences and where we are connected. It’s about highlighting the intersection of race, class and gender in a German context.”

Crucial is the film’s character as an art documentary, created explicitly as a work of art, not for commercial consumption.

“Firstly, the film consists of eight short films [designed] to allow viewers to watch maybe one film and then go through the exhibition again and come back and watch the next, or watch two or three. It makes you flexible. Secondly, I wanted to keep the individual stories but also show how these stories are connected. So, that’s why I kept them as eight short films. But the overarching umbrella is Black, women, art and resistance,” Kelly said.

She further emphasized the need to set “Milli’s Awakening” as part of the German Studies canon specifically.

“I think this film does not belong in the United States American canon. It belongs in a Black German canon. We will keep it that way because that is where it needs to be embedded in our own history and not in the history of the United States,” Kelly said.

Embeywa noted that “Milli’s Awakening” builds a generational documentation of Black German feminisms that highlights both the historical and contemporary.

“​​Concerning the current socio-political landscape, Dr. Kelly reiterates how important it is to continue advocating for structural solutions that can have a much greater impact than individual efforts,” Embeywa wrote.

The second event, held on Wednesday evening, was a lecture titled “Through an Intersectional Lens: Reimagining Blackness in German Expressionism.” Kelly’s presentation built upon the ideas introduced throughout the screening.

“The film is a good entry point into Black German history,” Kelly said. “The film is titled “Milli’s Awakening,’ inspired by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting ‘Sleeping Milli.’ In the film, we awaken the sleeping Milli, a naked Black woman lying on a canopy with her eyes closed in full expressionist painting style. In the lecture, I dive, now, not into the contemporary of waking her up by telling our stories and giving voice to our generation but diving into a historical lens, into the history of who Milli was.”

In the lecture, Kelly highlighted the diversity of her research concerning the work of the “Die Brücke,” or “The Bridge,” the foundational group in developing German Expressionism.

She discussed her discovery of over 30 different Black women depicted under the name “Milli” in Kirchner’s body of work. Through her analysis, she explored the implications of colonialism in the art of “Die Brücke,” noting various key themes: the role of exoticization and dehumanization, the history of human zoos and colonial violence, the sexualization of Black women and racial and gender oppression.

German student Mitchell Jefferson ’28 was struck by Kelly’s work.

I had no clue there was such a vast genre of Afro-German art,” Jefferson said. “It was powerful to discover that there are people out there who are researching these works, trying to widen the narrative of Afro-German issues.”