With so much time at home these last few months—and unknown months to come—many of us have been searching for inspiration and activities within easy reach. Allow us to recommend starting your own zine.
What’s a zine? Short for fanzine, a zine is a short homemade publication, usually printed or reproduced on a photocopier, with limited circulation and often about a specialized topic. You could think of zines as “underground” publications that tend to have a niche audience. They often serve as vehicles for ideas, personal expression, and art.
But zines are also rich primary sources that can tell us a lot about the time, place, and culture that produced them. Because they are self-published, zines allow marginalized voices to express themselves beyond the hierarchical and commodified world of mainstream media. They also let authors take control of the process of publishing.
The Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, part of the Rubenstein Library, has been collecting zines created by women, girls, and LGBTQ authors for years. Their collection includes over 6,000 zines, most of them dating from the 1990s to the early 2000s. They are used widely by Duke instructors and visiting researchers. You could say we’ve been big zinesters for some time.
In May, just as Duke students were finishing up their online classes and final papers, we put together a little zine anthology of quotations we’ve been thinking about during this difficult time. The title says it all: Print, Fold, Ponder: A Wee Zine of Wise Words We Need Now. It’s a little collection of quotes about optimism, hope, leisure—words that inspire us to look on the bright side of what we’re going through—but also about the seriousness of the situation we’re in.
Encouraged by the positive response we received, we decided to try it again. This time we offered a Summer 2020 Bucket List Quaran-zine to help people organize the things they want to read, listen to, watch, make, learn, or otherwise accomplish during this most unusual summer.
Both zines are easy to make and require only a single sheet of paper. A printer is handy if you have one, but not required. You can always just hand-copy what you see on the screen and make it your own.
Download and make our mini-zine of inspirational quotations, Print, Fold, Ponder: A Wee Zine of Wise Words We Need Now.
Or download and make our Summer 2020 Bucket List Quaran-zine and start checking off your planned accomplishments for the days and months ahead.