Natasha A. Kelly & Guests
To mark the 150th birthday of W.E.B. Du Bois HAU Hebbel am Ufer is putting on a three-day programme, curated by Natasha A. Kelly, in honour of the Black intellectual and cosmopolitan. Not many people in Germany know that starting in 1892 Du Bois was a research fellow at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University, today’s Humboldt-University, and that many of his ideas arose during this period. The sociologist and activist dedicated his life to the political struggle against racism. His first science fiction short story “The Comet” (1920), which portrays a Black man as the last survivor of humanity, makes clear which role Du Bois played in the emergence of “Afrofuturism”. International activists, artists and academics, including Molefi Kete Asante, Reynaldo Anderson and Sheree Renée Thomas, will illuminate the visions of W.E.B. Du Bois. In lectures, conversations, films, a concert, and an exhibition both his influence on and his critique of German society, which remain valid to this day, will be put in focus.
