Over the past year, I have had the privilege to work closely with Dr. Brendan Edwards, Curator at the W.D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections Gallery located in Douglas Library. Together we co-curated the exhibition From A to Z(ine) and have led and organized corresponding zine workshops for students.
It has been a true collaboration and I have learned so much! I have noticed our writing and discussions have blended our voices seamlessly, making it near impossible to distinguish individual contributions. I wanted to share a little bit about how we have been thinking together about zines over the past year.
A zine at its most basic is a DIY, small circulation, generally inexpensive, creative publication. They are uniquely accessible in that they can be made by anyone -- one needn’t be an artist or have any special training -- they can take any form in relation to a book and be about anything.
Beginning with the underground punk movement and evolving into various others such as the queer-zine movement and mental health awareness movement, zine culture has a long history of inclusivity and social and political activism providing a safe space for marginalised contributors to express freely on their own terms.
When you visit the exhibition, you may notice that we curated each vitrine loosely around a theme or zine movement including 1. What’s a zine? 2. Cookbooks and Chapbooks: are they zines? 3. Zines from Sci-fi fan cultures 4. Zines by local Kingston creators 5. Zines and Activism 6. Zines from indie-music band/fan cultures.
Zines have always thrived on community engagement, gaining momentum as they are circulated, and exchanged. They can be very transient and as such have not always been collected and valued by libraries and archives. We saw this as an opportunity to fill this gap, in part, to record, preserve, and share the histories and stories each zine carries and to also showcase them in an exhibition.
A collection of both student and local zines have been added, catalogued and available as cultural artefacts in the W.D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections. The image above highlights some of the zines in the exhibition that we collected made by students during our first zine workshop! Our second workshop lead by Bruce Kauffman asked grad students from Dr. Cameron’s ENGL 859: The Victorian Music Hall class to collectively contribute to our upcoming zine exhibition catalogue which will also live in the collection.
Need a break from grad school stress and marking? Come check out our exhibition From A to Z(ine)! The exhibition is always free to view and will be closing in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for closing reception dates, details, including our zine catalogue launch.
Feeling creative? This website provides templates and instructions for three different zine folds including the classic 6-page zine fold, the 16-page zine fold and the map fold. Zines can be a great tool to use in a classroom with your students regardless of age or discipline.
Want to make a zine with us during our last workshop, April 5, or donate a zine to the library’s collection? Reach out to us at jordan.library@queensu.ca
A special thank you to The Queen’s Inclusive Community Fund for contributing to our exhibition and workshops (if you have an idea it is worth applying to) and to Brendan for his mentorship and support (if you have the opportunity to pursue a work-study, internship of GRF with Brendan at W.D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections, do it).