Skip to Main Content

Digital Storytelling

This guide serves as a lesson plan for a session in the Barnard Zine Library led by Jenna Freedman

Read and Discuss

Find a Zine

CLIO on a topic or technique, e.g.

  • zines travel
  • zines risograph*
  • zines "buffy the vampire slayer"

We'll read/skim our zines for two minutes and then another and another and another (three total).

In Twos or Threes

What can you tell about the world of one of the zines you read? 

Why do you think the author chose a zine as their medium?

Are there graphics in the zine? Handwriting? Collages? Do they complement or complicate the text?

How does the zine make you feel?

Group Discussion, Same Questions as Above

Zines Are

zine excerpt: WHAT IS A ZINE ! "FOR ME AZINE IS NOT JUST A SELF-MADE AND SELF-, PUBLISHED BOOKLET BUT IT IS ALSO SITUATED WITHIN DIY CULTURE. THIS MEANS IT IS NON-PROFIT, NON-COMMERCIAL, LOW-BUDGET, AND NON -COM- PETITIVE. TOPICS AND STYLES CAN VARY BUT IT'S IMPORTANT THAT ZINES REMAIN ACCESSIBLE, BOTH TO READERS (EVERYONE CAN AFFORD TO BUY OR I TRADE THEM AND TO WRITERS (EVERYONE CAN MAKE THEM). ZINES DONT EXIST AS LITTLE PAPER ISLANDS BUT THEY ARE CONNECTED AND BLOSSOM WITHIN A MUTUALLY SUPPORTIVE ZINE COMMUNITY."

Nijsten, Nina. Scissors & Chainsaws No. 2 : Diary Comic Zine Made in July 2020 During International Zine Month. Gent, Belgium: Nina Nijsten, 2020.

On the Zine Spectrum from Zines 101 by Lea Cooper, PhD. <--they have a Ph.D in zines!