Seizing the Means of Publication: Zines, Power, and Feelings

Make a self-introduction zine (1-1:45)

(one-page zine folding technique)

Suggested contents (can be text, illustrations, poems, representational stand-ins, guessing games, Yelp reviews, etc.)

• Cover: name & a self-portrait
• Inside cover page: identities & metadata
• Facing page: where you're from
• Centerfold left: your family, animals, who you live with
• Centerfold right: your friends, chosen ones
• Facing back inside cover page: your house, your room
• Inside back cover page: a story of your name
• Back cover: Barnard summer playlist

Introductions by Sharing Zines (1:45-2:15)

Syllabus review & collective expectations (2:30-2:45)

• Attendance
• Self-regulating (comfort needs)
• Raising hands
• Feedback
• Addressing aggression
• Talking and listening, moving up and moving back
• Use of devices
• Expressing difficult feelings
• Readings
• Care 
• Vulnerability 
• Pronouns
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Course Description

The 1990s riot grrrl movement in the United States and around the world empowered girls, young women, and others to write and illustrate their own lives and histories. The Riot Grrrl Manifesto asserts, "BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own meanings." In this course, we will explore zines, which are self-publications that empower people of any race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and/or age to put their thoughts and feelings on paper. Using holdings from the Barnard Zine Library, we will engage in close and distant (i.e., computational) reading to explore the wide range of topics and styles represented in zines. Students will also create research-based zines, challenging the ten-page paper model of much of academia.

Learning Objectives

• Gain or deepen their understanding of zines and develop their own theories on alternative means of exchanging ideas and demonstrating knowledge. 
• Become proficient with close reading text and graphics.  
• Use computational tools to perform textual analysis on a subset of the zine corpus
• Apply concepts from zines to create a well-researched zine that challenges traditional means of publishing, communicating their subjective truths with passion, fury, compassion, creativity, joy, and rage.

Learning Activities

• Book chapter and article readings
• Zine making and other creative activities such as letter writing
• Textual analysis using web tools such as hypothes.is, voyant tools, and scalar

Course Materials

Stolen Sharpie Revolution, 7th edition $10, will also be on course reserve. 

Other readings will be drawn from 

• Zines in Third Space: Radical Cooperation and Borderlands Rhetoric by Adela Licona
• Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism by Alison Piepmeier  
• Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY Resources for Zines and Zine Culture by Alex Wrekk
• Zines from the Barnard Zine Library
• Additional articles, made available through Courseworks

Assignments

• Weekly zine assignments will be completed/not completed (throughout)
• The textual analysis will consist of digital visualizations accompanied by written analysis
• The final zine project will be evaluated based on research, boldness, and exploration of the form (final)

Read/Skim: Selected zines (2:45-3)

• We'll read/skim a zine for two minutes, then another one and another one.
• Discuss in twos and threes
• Discuss with the whole class

Homework

• Read Stolen Sharpie Revolution by Alex Wrekk, pages 1-30
• Make a short response zine for Alex