Julia Machtenberg | Workshop on Audre Lorde

As part of Black History Month, the Fritz Bauer Forum is offering a workshop on the power of poetry. In this workshop, selected essays and poems by the Black lesbian poet and activist Audre Lorde will be discussed. In her texts, Lorde develops new perspectives on her socio-cultural environment, criticising the oppression of Black women in particular. At the same time, with regard to marginalised people, she develops visions of a supra-regional social coexistence that recognises and values genuine differences – in contrast to socio-cultural oppressive norms. Workshop participants are thus invited to engage with intersectional themes and ideas in the historical context of the Civil Rights Movement and to reflect on and discuss these ideas against the background of their own realities.

Important: The text will be provided in the original English language. The discussion can take place in German and English.

Julia Machtenberg is a doctoral candidate at the Department of American Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. In her dissertation, she analyses representations of vulnerability in contemporary US-American poetry. Julia is also an honorary member of the Bochum Amnesty International Group.

The Fritz Bauer Forum deals with the struggle for human rights in the past and present – in February 2024 explicitly with Black History. However, Black History does not only play a role once a year during Black History Month – we also use it as a starting point to deal with Black History and the present in the further course of 2024, for example in April 2024 with a focus on Rwanda or soon in our podcast „Ten Twelve“.

Featured photo: Elsa Dorfman, CC BY 2.5, cropped