In anticipation of the TRACE Innovation Initiative‘s next journal issue, How We Make, we propose a session on a low-tech public humanities project: making zines. Zines are small, cheaply-produced booklets often freely distributed and focused on non-mainstream ideas. Kimberly Creasap’s article “Zine-Making as Feminist Pedagogy” discusses the benefits of teaching through making zines due to “[t]he informal, creative, participatory character of zines” and the ease with which they are “passed from person to person by hand” (155).

Zine-making builds on the participatory nature of makerspaces and spreadable media while also opening a forum for questioning how and why we make. In this session, participants will learn how to make mini-zines from a single piece of paper, fill the zines with answers to questions related to making in humanities, and leave them around town to spark discussions of humanities in the public sphere.

Creasap, Kimberly. “Zine-making as Feminist Pedagogy”. Feminist Teacher 24.3 (2014): 155–168. Web.

(Emily Brooks and Shannon Butts)