Heidi R. Lewis

A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin by Brailey Harris and Elie Deshommes

Brailey Harris

On our last Monday as the #FemGeniusesinBerlin, we had class at our usual spot, xart splitta on Hasenheide Street. After our initial check-in, we got to hear about Judy’s research on Indian hobbyism in Germany and its implications. Throughout our discussion, Judy gave us insight into the academic journey she has followed as her understanding of and relationship to this prominent industry has shifted. As we wrapped up class, I asked Professor Lewis a question about the generation and perpetuation of knowledge. “How do you decide what stories you share with the community, the public, and what you keep to yourself?” In her response, she reminded me that with whatever I choose to share, I should leave room for my future self to disagree with me. As you age, the perspective you have on the work you do will likely change. After class, I headed to the Schwules* Museum to learn about the queer histories of Berlin. With white faces abound, I saw friends, lovers, and colleagues, but I struggled to find myself represented in this space– except in a small but powerful exhibit dedicated to Audre Lorde, Katharina Oguntoye, and Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out. I did, however, notice what looked like remnants of New York style Ballroom culture in the drag queens’ dress and performances depicted on the walls. This leads me to the question: “How is Black culture within the United States reproduced elsewhere?” I ended my day with a visit to the Berlin Aquarium. As a giant Ecology nerd, I have been very curious to know more about how Berliners memorialize, preserve, and protect the nature that surrounds them. The tortoises and lizards were more friendly with visitors than I have ever witnessed, and I got to see insects I have only ever heard about in books!

Brailey Harris is a rising sophomore at Colorado College and a Texas native. They enjoy slam poetry, speaking out of turn, and playing rugby for the school’s Cutthroat Trout club team. Brailey’s major is currently undeclared, but they hope to intertwine their passions for understanding both people and the planet.

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Elie Deshommes (middle) with Kate Nixon (left) and Elliot Triplett (right)

My day in the life was an interesting one. I went to the Schwules* Museum and the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité (the Gay Museum and the Medical Histories Museum). Medical history has always been a topic of interest to me. From the humor of Ancient Greece to the “bad airs” of the Victorian period, humanity has come a long way in understanding what makes our bodies tick. However, what most fascinates me is the study of race, body rights, and the extent that these beliefs affect us today. The Medical Histories Museum acknowledged the shaky history of its early collections, noting that most wet and dry specimens were taken from the most vulnerable in society (e.g., mentally ill, unwed mothers, and poor people). Quite simply, these people were only seen as valuable in terms of what could be taken from them. Walking around and seeing the early specimens was a painful process. They had no names, and their anonymity in life continued in death. Female, Male, Adolescent, and many other labels were attached to them—all but the names that gave them identity. Seeing the phrenological skull and the journals on phrenological and racial typecasting made me ache. Before me was the justification and the works that were utilized in the slave trade, genocides, and many other systems of racial hate. The museum did a good job in acknowledging the criminality of these “doctors” and “scientists” with an entire section on how false science and racism influenced the results and the methods that were used to gain these results. But what made me hopeful was the museum’s focus on giving body rights and names back to the patients they cared for (in the connected hospital). From the 1920s onward, consent was a major element of the specimens. Other visitors didn’t enjoy the fact that the specimens had names and stories behind them, but for me it was refreshing. Their bodies weren’t stolen and abused. They were given freely with the goal to further medical understanding. It isn’t a perfect system. Classism, sexism, and racism are still very present in the modern day. For example, Black people are still often seen as patients without pain and without needs. The mentally ill are still treated with scorn and discomfort. But what I saw in that museum (and the adjacent studies in the Neuroscience Division) was a focus on the individual, a practice focused on truly helping others, caring about them, and letting the patient have their individuality and names back.

Elienne Deshommes is a queer rising junior who loves to learn. They are majoring in Organismal Biology, focusing on environmental stability and healing. However, their interests are broad and include African-based religions, queer history, evolutionary sciences, and Greco-Roman history. Born in Denver, CO to a Haitian immigrant father and a Coloradan mother, their dream would be to return the island of Hispaniola and its ecological past to increase the opportunities of LGBT citizens via STEM jobs and education.

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A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin by Glorie Michelle Romero Elvir Enamorado and Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti

Glorie Michelle Romero Elvir Enamorado

This morning, I woke up with back pain and made the executive decision to take a sick day. When Nova returned from class, we went on a trip to explore the city. We boarded the transit and were on our way! As we were walking around, I started to notice all the children running around. I thought back to “Women In East Germany Today” by louise k. davidson and the dilemma many women have in regard to balancing the demands of career and family. While many women have experienced inaccessibility regarding birth control, East German women freely enjoyed available birth control, a year of paid maternity leave, and free babysitting when many other women throughout the world didn’t. When Nova and I were enjoying our croissant and coffee and observing parents walking by, she said, “Have you noticed all the fancy baby strollers people have here?” Given that the Berlin government has given approximately $500 stipends for baby clothes and baby carriages, it made sense. People had baby strollers that were attached to their bikes, held multiple children, and overall suited their specific needs. While the experiences of women here is not perfect, it has been interesting reflecting on the transnational feminist pieces we read in class and engaging with those theories in reference to Berlin. As davidson writes, while most westerners viewed East Germany as repressive (before the fall of the Berlin Wall), the reality is they enjoyed freedom about birth rights without worrying about its affordability or availability. While taking this course, I have found myself constantly reflecting on the reading material as I navigate around Berlin. Whether it’s conversations with classmates or interactions with Berliners, I have been truly immersed in my learning. I could not imagine a better way to experience Berlin!

Glorie Michelle Romero Elvir Enamorado was named after her matriarchal grandmother Gloria, and many family members call her Gloria or Flaca. She was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and raised in Long Beach, California. She grew up with a Mexican stepfather, though, so she would consider herself culturally mixed. She’s the oldest immigrant daughter and a first-generation high school graduate. She got her passport just this year, and is now studying in Berlin—so needless to say, she is (and about to be!) a well-travelled girl!

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Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti

Dr. Zachary Wood, a Public Services professor at Seattle University, led our class on Friday. Professor Wood is also teaching a class in Berlin, so he and Dr. Lewis decided to switch classes for the day and then bring us all together. Professor Wood focuses on manifestations of power and critical community development, focusing on Berlin as a contested space due to the Berlin Wall and most recently due to gentrification. We discussed a multitude of topics in class that critically examined Berlin as an urban space. We discussed the power in the acknowledgment and reclamation of harm done through memorials, urban navigation, being an other by being a visitor, how we intersect with organic and non-organic spaces, and the urban experience as creation. These points of discussion are not specific to Berlin and can be applied to essentially all urban spaces, but we were able to contextualize them through Germany’s Turkish Workers Program, the political systems of East and West Germany, protesting culture, and the integration process after the Berlin Wall fell. Professor Wood emphasized the importance of the various forms of intersecting in urban space and how we step into somebody else’s way of existing when we visit a new space. He prioritizes navigating space as an other with humility and creating accessible spaces for the other. Through this class session, I developed a more informed understanding of Berlin’s cityscape during integration, especially in regard to the marginalization of Turkish workers and how Germany’s migrant partnership has had lasting effects on current-day policies. The reading material also helped me conceptualize Germany’s protesting culture and how it varies from the U.S. When paired with the three frameworks guiding our course (Black Feminism, Transnational Feminism, and Critical Race Theory), I was able to understand how cities are traversed by different demographics and the ways their experiences complicate an urban space.

Marisa Diaz Bonacquisti is a Chicana and Italian from Denver’s Northside with a passion for art as resistance. Her culture, community, and language have deeply informed her academic pursuits and aspirations, as well as her professional path. As such, Marisa is a rising junior double-majoring in Southwest Studies and Spanish (Hispanic Studies). She has a focus in public art and is especially excited about Berlin’s street art!

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Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art by Nova Yu and Barbara Bilić

Nova Yu

Conveniently, after a 10 minute walk from our apartment, we arrived at the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art. After spending the morning learning about the historical background of graffiti and street art and their present day impact in the city of Berlin, my classmates and I explored the museum, which was packed with street art, sculpture, and photography. While seeing the museum pieces, it felt necessary to have learned about the foundations of street art earlier that day. Street art and graffiti, unlike the stereotypical correlation to vandalism and crime, have always had their roots in individuality, creativity, and expression. Street art has become a method for artists to communicate specifically through tags and words in a contemporary and public form. Pieces in the museum covered a range of current social and political conversations through each artist’s style and medium. These paintings, collages, and photographs consisted of acrylic and spray paint, and some were even created completely digitally. In learning about something we all see on buildings, trains, and streets here in Berlin, I have gained more perspective on how the accessibility of graffiti has shaped who is participating in street art. For marginalized folx, graffiti can act as a way to stabilize their environments regardless of their position in life and to allow them to begin a journey towards understanding identity. The museum brought this concept to life as we observed pieces commentating on war, race, climate change, media consumption, and much more. The combination of an interesting story and vibrant colors creates a journey for the viewer to feel certain emotions and see a glimpse into a different life. Street art’s versatility has allowed BIPoC and other marginalized people an opportunity to make a literal mark and say, as our tour guide Rob noted, “I am here.”

Nova Yu is a Chinese American student from Grand Junction, Colorado. She is currently going into her final year of college majoring in Economics. Nova is the daughter of two Chinese immigrants and the middle child of three. She was born in West Virginia, and at a young age, she moved to a rural town in Colorado where she has lived most of her life. This is Nova’s first time in Europe, and she believes she has picked the best first stop: Berlin!

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Barbara Bilić

As the #FemGeniusesinBerlin moved towards the second section of the course, we traveled into the world of street art and graffiti. After our morning graffiti and street art tour, we visited the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art, which is filled with thought-provoking art and installations by artists from different parts of the world.  The museum has been a part of the non-profit initiative of Foundation Berlin Leben since 2013, with its main goal of promoting integration, strengthening of neighborhood structures, social balance, and collaboration among artists through cultural education. It currently features works of over 50 artists working in different mediums of graffiti and other forms of urban and contemporary art, presenting individual as well as societal perspectives. The questions that promote the goal of Urban Nation are explored through the exhibition’s eight chapters: WE NEED TO TALK, FORTY-TWO, SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES, THE FORUM, DEEP FAKE, I AM AN X, BUT…, HYBRID HISTORIES and FAIL AGAIN, FAIL BETTER. These chapters bring up questions of how we communicate, how we deal with allegedly truthful information, and its interaction with digital technology. Through observing pieces by artists from different parts of the world and with various German identities, including Black German artists, African artists, artists from the U.S., Ukraine, Iran, and Poland, accompanied by Berlin street and graffiti artists, we can configure a visual transnational conversation regarding social commentary, marginalized communities, and immigrant identities. M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s “Transnational Feminism as Radical Praxis” helped me understand the dialogue between the art pieces as encouraging understanding rather than comparison and avoiding a reductionist approach to intertwined international topics. Some of the pieces that stood out were those by Josephine Sagna (German-Senegalese), Amartey Golding (Scottish and Ghanaian), Ravi Amar Zupa (Colorado based), and ICY & SOT (an Iranian duo in Brooklyn, New York), among others.

Barbara Bilić is a rising senior at Colorado College. She comes from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a small but beautiful country in Southeastern Europe also known as the Balkans. She is double majoring in Integrative Design and Architecture and German Studies. She grew up in Prozor-Rama and received a scholarship in 2018 to attend United World College (UWC) in Mostar. In Mostar, she completed the International Baccalaureate Program, which led her to obtain a Davis UWC scholarship to Colorado College. Some of her hobbies and interests include design, poetry, music, and fashion.  

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Graffiti and Street Art Walking Tour with Alternative Berlin by Noor Issa and Cecelia Russell

Noor and Katharin

Passing graffiti might inspire one to scoff, admire it, or ignoring it completely. Graffiti has become associated with urban culture, but what are the purposes for engaging in this expression in the most heavily “bombed” city in Europe, according to Simon Arms? As FemGeniuses, we had the opportunity to experience a tour of one site of heavy graffiti. During our walk, Rob, our guide and an artist himself, helped us get a better picture of the inception, legality, and social implications of the scene. In Berlin, reunification (after the “fall” of the Berlin Wall) left the region in debt; policing measures are pricey, and, if graffiti brings in tourism and other sources of revenue, then what’s the use in stopping it? Some may view this as illegal defacement, but starting in 1965 with Philly teen “Cornbread,” graffiti was a means of getting a girl’s attention. In America, graffiti started as a form of expression in historically Black and Chicano neighborhoods. People who wanted to show their presence could get spray paint, spray, and run. The canvas is provided—free expression is that accessible. Now, there are legally-sanctioned pieces, which Rob tells us are most often high and large. Slide 5, for example, is a piece where the artist comments on the Saudi censorship and mystery death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who opposed the Crown Prince. To me, this expression of free speech on a subject of censorship was poignant. Lastly, as Rob wisely put, some view graffiti as artists’ way of saying, “I was here,” but really, it is a way of saying, “I AM here” for those who are silenced, erased, and actively discredited.

Noor Issa is a Libyan Muslim born in Northern Colorado. She loves food, her family, and exploring cultures, both her own and others. Her first language is Arabic, and she’s the eldest of four. She’s pursuing a Psychology degree, as well as a double major in Race, Ethnicity and Migration studies at Colorado College. In her free time, Noor enjoys art, music, and weightlifting. In the future, she hopes to travel and learn more about Arabic, Pan-Africanism, and Islamic Studies. #FemGeniusesinBerlin

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Cecelia Russell

On Thursday, we had a walking tour with our guide, Rob, who showed examples of both street art and graffiti—two distinctly different art forms. We started by looking at several pieces of legal street art: some commissioned, some not. This led to conversations about the illegal art all over the city, including graffiti, which is what I will focus on. With its roots stemming from poor communities of color, graffiti is a writing-based art that is widely understood as a form of self-expression that often focuses on names (or tags). For people living in these communities, having the ability to put their name in visible public spaces offers a sense of control over their environment and a boost of self-confidence by giving them a voice. This notion has since caught on to the mainstream and has brought the art form under the spotlight. We know that our harsh judicial system in America values property over people, as Rob noted, meaning “vandalism” is a serious matter. However, ever since the economic turmoil caused by war and building the city back up, Berlin has accumulated a significant amount of debt. Tourists come to Berlin for its historical significance, as well as the arts and culture: music, dance, clubs, and yes—street art. Because the “vandalism” is an attraction that brings money into the city, eradicating it is not a high priority for the state. Using a transnational lens to learn about the art is fundamental in understanding the development and impacts of street art and graffiti. From the origins of graffiti in Philadelphia then to New York with the emergence of Hip Hop to Paris and other cities all over the world, such as Berlin, each iteration of the art influences the next to bring us to today.

Cecelia Russell is a rising senior from the north shore of Massachusetts, and her passions have in part been shaped by her upbringing on a fruit farm. Much of her time is spent organizing with other young people for environmental legislation, food security, and climate justice—with a recent focus on the college’s divestment campaign. Academically, she has so many interests that she has yet to declare a major, but she has spent most of her time studying environmental science.

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A Day in the Life of the #FemGeniusesinBerlin by Italia Alexandria Bella’-Victoria Rodriguez Quintana and Kate Nixon

Italia Alexandria Bella’-Victoria Rodriguez Quintana

This week’s readings contextualized the fall of the Berlin Wall and the violence during integration of West and East Germany. As a Mexican-American, it felt impossible for me not to see the methods of violence globally maintained in the 21st century. I thought often about Transnational Feminism as a framework to explore borders and how they position us in a false binary of confined or protected. Additionally, we’ve learned Critical Race Theory functions as a framework to understand the racialization of immigration legislature, as well as the creation of national identities that essentialize exclusionary ideologies. The paradigm of “who belongs” versus “who is excluded” has been necessary to utilizing people as tools of oppressive institutions, exemplified in the violent treatment of migrant groups within West Germany. Our class discussion then changed to forms of resistance in Germany and how the fight for liberation includes anticipation of our oppressors fighting back to maintain power. This was discussed in relationship to ideals of work and production, as those who face the worst of capitalism in the U.S. (Black and Brown communities) are also faced with the question: Will I choose to rest or resist? Similarly, Black and Brown women are asked to position themselves as silent victims of violence for the betterment of their communities. This can be analyzed in the discouragement of reinforcing racial stereotypes and brutalization towards Black and Brown communities, while silencing conversations of intracommunity issues. I see this in relation to frameworks of Black Feminist Theory, as Black women are asked to give up their racial or gender identity to focus on a singular experience of oppression, which flattens the complexity of existing within the intersections of multiply marginalized categories. This week’s readings also examined the relationship between colonialism and the construction of race, which has served as historical context for how marginalized groups are treated in contemporary Germany. On the streets, we saw street art of a cop saying “aquí no necesitamos a gente como tu.” This contributed to my understanding of Germany by emphasizing the dichotomy between differing systems of racialization that globally share foundations of anti-immigrant sentiments. The street art piece, which translates to “we don’t need people like you here,” reminded me of our class in which we discussed how borders designate whether we belong and how racialized national identities designate BIPoC as forever foreign.

Italia Alexandria Bella’-Victoria Rodriguez Quintana is a Xicana from South Denver, Colorado. Her name seems long, but it represents her and her mom’s shared interest in paying homage to the people who made her. Italia is a Romance Languages major with minors in Political Science and Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies. Her study of linguistics allows her to explore history and culture through personal narratives, serving as a method of decolonization of the self. She enjoys reading feminist theory, Instagram reels, thinking|pondering, weightlifting, and reviewing food w| her bestie on @latinayumtinas.

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Kate Nixon

Hello, and welcome to my day in the life on a lovely Wednesday in Berlin! I started my morning with yogurt and coffee (made by one of my wonderful roommates—thank you Elliot!!) and headed to class. We started class with a discussion of love—questioning how is love defined and how is it pushing us towards resistance? The day before, we went on a tour exploring the escape tunnels built under the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. One of the largest factors motivating these escapes was love, so much so that one man made sure the tunnel he built was tall enough for his fiancé to use without having to crouch down. These tunnels showed us how love gave those tunnel builders purpose and motivation to keep going even despite the low (25%) success rate of the tunnels. Our conversation then shifted to how we keep resisting, knowing that regardless of our best efforts, nothing will be successful 100% of the time. While we didn’t come up with any concrete solutions, we came back to love and how necessary it is to have in hard times. Keeping with the discussion of staying motivated when everything seems exhausting, we talked about the importance of rest. As self-defined “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde has written, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” We discussed how napping is a form of self-care and active resistance, and in honor of that, after class and amazing visits to a gluten-free café and a queer bookstore, I decided to take a nap. After I arose from my restorative siesta, Elliot and I decided to head to the Berlin State Library to finish off the night with some schoolwork.

Kate Nixon is a rising senior pursuing a double major in Feminist & Gender Studies and Psychology, with an interest in finding where the two intersect and how they can inform each other. Raised in Maryland and Kansas City, Kate enjoys being in nature and exploring new places. When not working on classwork or the Colorado College newspaper, you can find Kate with friends making art or reading queer and feminist books in various coffee shops.

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