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—Emily McBride, Editor
This podcast—led and produced by Kai Mesman-Hallman—provides some final reflections on the Block 4 2017 section of Hidden Spaces, Hidden Narratives: Intersectionality Studies in Berlinwith Professor Heidi R. Lewis. Throughout the block, the #FemGeniusesinBerlin have taken walking tours, visited museums and cultural centers, and met with activists and artists in the city to conduct situated examinations of how the identities of marginalized people and communities in Germany (especially in Berlin)—such as Black Germans, Turkish Germans, migrants, refugees, victims of Neo-Nazi terrorism and police brutality, and LGBTQI communities—are constructed, particularly how these constructions are dependent on racism, heterosexism, colonialism, imperialism, and other forms of oppression. Additionally, we examined how these communities resist, reject, revise, and reproduce these narratives as they construct their own subjectivities.
Kai is a junior at Colorado College majoring in Psychology, and is originally from San Diego, CA. She is especially interested in consciousness and the ways our brains’ processing and collecting information can shape our beliefs and thoughts. She spends her free time with her dog and watching conspiracy theory videos.
Joining Kai in her discussion are Uma Scharf—a Baltimore, MD native and junior at Colorado College majoring in Neuroscience, and Drew Ceglinski—a Bath, ME native and junior at Colorado College majoring in Geology.
Block 4 2017 FemGeniuses in Berlin Podcast Index:
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This podcast—led and produced by Maddie Sorensen—examines “A Right to Mourn; A Right to Monument,” an installation by Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro featured at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. According to the Ballhaus website, “Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro presents an installation at Ballhaus Naunynstraße: a mobile garden plantation and a satellite tower make up the foundation pillars of this special space of commemoration, growth and healing. Visitors are invited to complete the artist’s pre-produced voice archive by recording their own contributions as sound testimonies and sharing their demands for a right to a monument.” Further, “The project is part of a process to commemorate anti-colonial movements between Germany and Africa. Here the demand for reparations is addressed in the context of technology transfer: sound recordings and transmissions provide the basis for a decolonial archive intended as a performative gesture for a monument to all those that were erased. Considering the historical traces of Germany’s involvement in colonial systems—particularly through accessing botanical sciences and cultural industries—the monument is intended to challenge our constructs of memory: using mythologies to inspire a moment of healing and repair.”
Photo Credit: Maddie Sorensen
Maddie Sorensen is a junior Organismal Biology and Ecology major at Colorado College from outside of Chicago. She has always wanted to dive deeper into German history, learn another language, and explore more of Europe, so she found this to be the perfect opportunity for the semester. When she is not reading a science textbook or planning her next adventure, she can be found playing tennis, fishing, biking, skiing and baking lots of sweets.
Photo Credit: Maddie Sorensen
Joining Maddie in her discussion are Maggie Mehlman—a junior Math major from Denver, CO, and Atiya Harvey—a senior Feminist and Gender Studies major from Washington, D.C.
NOTE: The photo credit for the featured image also belongs to Maddie Sorensen.
This podcast—led and produced by Maya Littlejohn—examines our session with Peggy Piesche, Maisha Eggers, and Katja Kinder of Generation ADEFRA. In the mid-1980s, a group of Black women activists were brought together in Berlin by self-described “Black lesbian mother warrior poet” Audre Lorde (1934-1992) and inspired to found the initiative ADEFRA: Black Women in Germany. Additionally, historian and founding member Katharina Oguntoye “points to the complexity of the task of not only bringing together previously relatively isolated Black women in Germany with their sometimes very differently developed vital interests, but also to keep them together in the long run.”
Photo Credit: Maya Littlejohn
Maya Littlejohn is a junior at Colorado College majoring in Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies and minoring in Political Science. She’s originally from Brooklyn, New York. During her free time, Maya is involved in the President’s Council and works for Attorney Jarrett Adams at the Innocence Project. On her good days, you’re likely to find herin a sunny spot sketching and binge watching MSNBC.
Photo Credit: Maya Littlejohn
Joining Maya in her discussion are D. Adams—a Memphis, TN native and junior at Colorado College majoring in Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies, and Atiya Harvey—a Washington, DC native and a senior at Colorado College majoring in Feminist and Gender Studies.
NOTE: The featured image photo credit also belongs to Maya Littlejohn.
CORRECTION:Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte (Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out) was co-edited by Katharina Oguntoye, May (Opitz) Ayim, and Dagmar Schultz.
This podcast—led and produced by Atiya Harvey—examines our “Subways and Bunkers in the Cold War” tour with Berliner Unterwelten. According to the organization, this tour “follows the traces of the Cold War in the underground. In West Berlin, civil defence shelters were reactivated or newly built in preparation for a possible nuclear war. Particularly after the building of the Berlin Wall, the West German government and the West Berlin senate invested millions in these projects. Some of these were built as ‘multi-purpose structures’ and are currently used as underground stations, parking garages and storage facilities. By explaining the practical preparations made to help people survive, this tour attempts to make the realities and horrors of such conflict easy to comprehend.”
Photo Credit: Atiya Harvey
Atiya a senior Feminist & Gender Studies major from Washington, DC. She is taking this class in Berlin, because she enjoys learning about world history. She is a blunt, empathetic, and outdoorsy person who stands up for social and environmental issues.
Photo Credit: Atiya Harvey
Joining Atiya in her discussion are Karl Hirt—a sophomore at Colorado College and New York native who hopes to either double major in German and Economics or International Political Economy, and Maddie Sorensen—a junior at Colorado College hailing from Chicago and majoring in Organismal Biology and Ecology.
NOTE: The photo credit for the featured image also belongs to Atiya Harvey.
