By Christy Tidwell
“[Zines] are practices of ‘poetic world-making’—poetic not in the sense of a poem on the page (although they can be this too),
but in the sense of poesis: the process of creating something that did not exist before.”
– Gwen Allen
The classes I teach create communities. Students get to know each other as they learn the course material, and they share ideas and work with each other. This is a form of world-making, even if temporary, and I love this about my classes. But I don’t want the connections and sharing to stop at the classroom door or to be forgotten when the semester ends. The goal is for my students to connect what they’re learning in class with the rest of the world, to share what they’ve learned with others, to hear what others have learned, and to join and build other communities.
Finding ways to do this can be challenging, but it’s not impossible.
This semester, as a way for students to connect across classes and share work with broader audiences, a few of us in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences department (myself, Matt Whitehead, Evan Thomas, Erica Haugtvedt, and Mary Witlacil) put on a series of zinemaking events that culminated in a Zinefest in the Apex Gallery on December 4th. Zinefest was an all-day come-and-go event that displayed the zines students made in classes (and, in a few cases, just for fun!), provided some examples of interesting zines made by others, and gave visitors a chance to make their own zines. (If you missed it this year, watch out for another event next year!)
This event let students share some of what they have learned this semester, giving them a broader audience, and it also connected them to students in other classes and to the audiences who came to Zinefest. While I did not count the number of visitors during Zinefest, the gallery filled several times and was rarely empty. Some people walked through relatively quickly and took in only a few zines; others stayed for quite a while, standing and reading multiple zines before finally deciding on some they wanted to keep. One student – who will remain nameless for obvious reasons – wrote in a reflection afterward, “I spent almost 2 hours there and accidentally missed class, so I would say I had a good time.” Although I would (of course) never encourage a student to miss class, this indicates that Zinefest offered this student something meaningful.
Because most students were asked to bring multiple copies of their zines, visitors could take a copy of one if they were particularly interested in its ideas or really loved it. Hopefully, they will re-read any zines they took, remember the event, and maybe even be inspired to make their own! Leaving with a material artifact helps the experience and community created through this event extend past Zinefest itself.
As an event, Zinefest promoted connections and community; as a practice, making zines (even without an event like Zinefest) provides us all with an opportunity to create something new – to engage in world-making – and to share that something with others, without requiring elaborate technology or infrastructure, refined skills, or many resources. Anyone can make a zine, and that’s what’s so beautiful about them.
The Novum 