Overview?: ? For your final project, you will be creating an annotated zine?. Your zine can be a perzine, fanzine, political zine, comic book zine, collective zine, poetry zine, or anything else you can dream up (see here for a list and explanation of the most common zine genres). The "annotated" part is where you write a short essay to accompany your zine that is just for me to read. It will show me how you engaged with the material and why you made the rhetorical choices you made. You will showcase your zine on the last day of class.
You will use an intersectional analysis to cover the implications at the micro, meso, and macro levels for an issue that is thematically relevant to our class. This is a multi-modal project. What is a zine??? The Barnard Zine Library says that "a zine is a self-publication, motivated by a desire for self-expression, not for profit.? "
Underground Press elaborates: "A zine is a "self-published, small circulation, non-commercial booklet or magazine, usually produced by one person or a few individuals. Zines come in all shapes, sizes, topics, and formats. Most zines are photocopied, but they can also be printed offset, like a magazine or newspaper. Zines range from handwritten and sloppy to cut-and-paste (text pasted on top of background images) to artsy with handmade touches to produced on a computer with a professional looking layout. Zines may incorporate screen printing, linoleum cuts, and hand-stitched bindings. Most zines have print runs of a couple dozen to a few hundred copies."
Your zine:
? Should contain at least 8-10 pages (and I'm open to how you define "pages") of original text
? Should have a clear purpose and audience
? Must refer to at least THREE outside sources, ONE of which must be from class (a text can also be visual, by the way)
? Needs to cite the above sources in MLA format, both in text and with a works cited list at the end (this can be done in your annotation instead)
? Must concretely and thoughtfully address at least ONE aspect of the systems of oppression we have studied (race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, body size/type, etc.) in an INTERSECTIONAL way
? Can have as much or as little personal information in it as feels right/comfortable to you; I will NOT be evaluating you on the quality of your personal experiences, but rather on the connections you make to the material we have covered in class Your reflective annotation? should answer the following questions in a thoughtful and nuanced manner:
1. How did you decide on your topic?
2. What is the purpose of your zine?
3. Who is the intended audience of your zine? How many copies will you print and to whom will you distribute them? How did you make that decision and why does it matter?
4. What does your zine say about power, resistance, and liberation? What specific modes of power and oppression are you pushing back against with your zine?
5. How does your zine fit in with larger resistance movements?
6. In what ways is your zine intersectional?
7. Explain the stylistic choices you made (size, layout, type of writing, mode of assembly, etc.) and how they relate to the content of your zine.
8. Which outside sources did you choose and why?
9. In what ways might your zine build community, if that was one of your goals? What kind of dialogue do you hope to encourage with others and how/where can that dialogue take place?
10. What knowledge did you gain during the project about yourself and your subject matter? How will you use that knowledge going forward?
11. Anything else you want me to know?
NOTE: ?Your annotation should be 12-point Times New Roman, double spaced, and in MLA format.
More on Learning Outcomes?. ?Upon successful completion of your zine project, you will be able to do the following:
? Apply the lens of intersectional humanities to analyze relationships of power and privilege at the micro, meso, and macro levels
? Examine related information for a deeper understanding of systems of oppression
? Identify opportunities for and methods of resistance and liberation in order to reduce inequity
? Deepen your understanding of where you fit in the context of your own matrix of identities, privilege, and oppression
? Approach learning tasks with the willingness to take risks and change attitudes and behavior toward self and others
? Situate yourself as an agent of change and an active participant in a discourse community
? Clearly articulate your ideas with originality through active learning
Apply new knowledge to personal experiences and surrounding communities
NOTE: The above criteria and project requirements are reflected in the evaluation criteria on Canvas.
Pre-Writing Discussion Questions: Understanding Zines as Resistance:
1. What do you think is the difference between government propaganda, a school textbook, and a self-published zine? Why do the means of production matter?
2. How is a zine different from a blog?
3. How are zines a form of protest? What do zines communicate about power and resistance?
4. What do zines have to teach us about recent and current anti-mainstream movements like riotgrrrl and punk?
5. How do these zines relate to earlier pamphleteering movements, and how they are related (or not related) to blogs and other digital modes of protest?
6. Why do marginalized groups/individuals find zines to be a powerful mode of self-expression?
7. Where do you see student resistance and protest playing a role in your life today?
You can read more about what makes zines a radical form of self-expression here.
What kind of zine should I make?? ?There is no "right" or "wrong" way to make a zine. Just make sure all the choices you make are deliberate and thoughtful?. You should be able to explain your choices around content, layout, style, tone, etc. in your annotation.