Lecture and discussion: "Through an Intersectional Lens: Reimagining Blackness in German Expressionism." Explores class, gender, and race and examines Germany’s colonial history through the art of Die Brücke. The Brücke was a group of male Expressionist artists who worked in Dresden, Berlin, and environs in the decade leading up to the First World War. Some artists, particularly Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Otto Müller, featured Black women models in their paintings, and the artists even painted themselves as Black men on occasion. Kelly’s talk explores this as-yet-silent history of the Brücke and shows how Germany’s colonial history played out among the German avant garde.

Natasha A. Kelly is a bestselling author and editor of eight books. She is a curator, artist, filmmaker, theater director, and professor. Her film "Mili's Awakening" debuted at the 10th Berlin Biennale in 2018. Natasha is the founding director of Germany's first institute for Black German Arts and Culture.

Open to the public. For more information, please contact Rebecca Jordan (r.jordan@bowdoin.edu).

Sponsored by the departments of German, Africana Studies, Theater and Dance and the Cinema Studies and Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies programs. Also supported by the Blythe Bickel Edwards Fund, the Black Student Union, the German Consulate (Boston) and the Colby College department of German and Russian.