How To Make an Academic Zine for a Public Audience

Download the Zine If you’re at all familiar with the fiercely independent, anti-institutional history of the zine, you might reject the supposition that they can be used within academic circles. Yet zines have potential as a creative, cohesive outlet for public history. Zines originated around the 1930s in science fiction circles but are most often associated with the latter half of the twentieth century. Used as an alternative art form outside of mainstream media, zine authors from the 1960s through the 1990s used self-publishing to broadcast bold ideas through small, often collaborative, pamphlets. Zine topics could range from birth control to bus routes, but almost always were intended to communicate something significant from the creator to the outside world. For a brief history of zines, visit the Rare Book Collection at UNC Libraries.