Feminist Zines: (Pre)Occupations of Gender, Politics, and D.I.Y. in a Digital Age

Zine historian Bleyer (2004) defines zines as "the intersection of art, protest, confession, and theory" (p. 49). In his survey of zines, Duncombe (1997) categorizes them as "noncommercial, nonprofessional, small-circulation magazines which their creators produce, publish, and distribute by themselves" (p. 6). Zines are often characterized by hand bound pages, scrawled and personalized handwriting, and generally intimate qualities of handmade books, along with personal and political content. Zinesters (who make zines) in this subcultural genre create an array of materials including but not limited to personal chapbooks, diaries, commentaries, editorials, rants, news, and recipe collections. Referencing the greater political scenes of gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights, zines also document the journal/diary-like realms of personal testimonials and individual experiences through collage and drawings. The zine framework occupies the space between objects that are manufactured and things that are handcrafted and one-of-a-kind (often abbreviated online as: OOAK). Zines may be compellingly rugged, jagged, and sticky, yet they can also be very digital and machinized in their font, formatting, and Xeroxed qualities. Zines often model and question a balance of handmade and handcrafted with mass-produced and digitized. Zines are produced by a diverse array of individual makers, whether students creating zines inside or out of school settings, hobbyists working on zines recreationally, or artists approaching self-publishing and book arts such as zines as the focus of their profession.In this article I investigate relationships between zines in print and in digital formats, both embodying artistic, literary, and pedagogical practices of feminist inquiry, political protest, and personal expression. Art education researcher Klein (2010) observes that for art educators, the zine framework of images and text cultivates "storytelling, self-expression, teacher identity construction, and collaboration" (p. 42). Tavin (2002) advocates collaborative and countercultural explorations via student-produced zines. Through an analysis of the persistence of zines in university collections, K-12 classrooms, and D.I.Y/maker communities online and in the physical world, I will examine craft/craftivist cultures of feminist zines and their creators, particularly pertaining to issues of gender, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and related, recent politics. In contextualizing zines and their communities, I will also address related examples from my own teaching and activist experiences.Zine Histories: Foremothers of Zine TraditionsAlthough zines can be seen as a relatively new and youthful framework for countercultural art, their histories may also be usefully linked with long-standing traditions of self- publishing among artists and artistic communities. Friedman (1997) observed, "it was artists and writers who took up the call of self-publishing in the early part of the twentieth century" (p. 4). She also points out the importance of (zine-like) Dadaist manifestos, surrealist journals, anarchic broadsheets, and miniature magazines. In addition, researchers like Congdon and Blandy (2003) have linked zines with political pamphlets dating back to the self-published materials about the Vietnam War or even Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776). Zines may be seen as an extension of genres like artist sketchbooks, chapbooks, surrealist games, and manifestos of art history, highlighting young women's contributions in particular (e.g. Women's Studio Workshop (http://wsworkshop.org/), the National Museum of Women in the Arts (http://www.nmwa.org/), the Dinner Party Curriculum Project (http://judychicago.arted.psu.edu/archived/dpcp/minx.php), femmage (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/gallery/miriam_ schapiro.php), riot grrrl manifesto (http://onewarart.org/riot_grrrl_manifesto.htm)).Part of the richness of zines that is of interest in teaching is located not only in their historical links to other artists' books, but also in histories and traditions of feminism, activism, and open publishing. …