Julia Machtenberg | Workshop on Martin Luther King Jr.

Workshop with Julia Machtenberg (PhD student, Institute for American Studies, Ruhr University Bochum)

As part of Black History Month, the Fritz Bauer Forum is offering a workshop on the expressive power of letters in the name of human rights. In the first part of the workshop, participants will read Martin Luther King, Jr.’s „Letter from Birmingham Jail“ and discuss the role human rights played in the US civil rights movement based on this text. In his letter, King contextualises his imprisonment in a jail cell in Birmingham against the background of his non-violent civil rights activism, with which he campaigned for the end of segregation. He embeds his activism in a far-reaching human rights discourse. The workshop then invites participants to reflect on what has been discussed with regard to the realities of their own lives. In this context, an exchange on possibilities for political engagement and social participation is also welcome.

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 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“.