DIY-ing Gender: A Zine Fest

What is a Zine? 

A zine (pronounced zeen) is a self-produced publication often in a scrap-booked/DIY aesthetic. While zines can be about any topic, they have played an important role in disseminating activist, anarchist, queer, and third-wave feminist thought. As a self-published medium, they allow for people to disseminate ideas/information/images/representations that are missing or excluded from dominant publications (whether that is mainstream media or academic texts).

Why a Zine fest?

We are running a zine fest as an alternative to traditional forms of academic gatherings. Zines are created to articulate emerging ideas, lived experiences, reflections, and radical perspectives that may be rejected or ignored by the mainstream. There is no reviewer 2 or a ‘required canon’ to cite – it is about expressing your ideas in a format that makes sense to you. Zines are never intended to have a wide circulation, they are about finding and making connections between people. It is not about defending the relevance or uniqueness of your idea to an audience, but about finding those who resonate with what you are saying.

While we are not saying that all traditional academic gatherings should be replaced with zine fests, we do think there are a lack of spaces directed towards connection and creative expression in academia. We want to run a zine fest to foster that space.

What will happen on the day?

Attendees will be able to view submitted zines and speak with the creators in an open 'fair' format. There will be parallel talks on zines and materials for attendees to create their own zines (or remix the submitted zines).