Library and Information Science Commons^™

A year ago I started the Zine Collection at Simmons with just $100.

A year ago I decided to approach one of my Sociology faculty members with the idea of incorporating zines in her class. She and I are both from the Riot GRRRL era and produced our own zines. She was game. We decided to test pilot zines with her Inequality course which has a mixture of sociology students and nursing students. We hoped this would allow her students to connect more with the material.

Why zines?

Feminist pedagogy employs strategies such as collaborative learning, valuing experiential knowledge, employing consciousness-raising about sexism and other forms of oppression, and destabilizing the power hierarchies of the traditional classroom. Ultimately, feminist library instruction seeks to empower learners to be both critical thinkers and critical actors who are motivated and prepared to bring about social change. The concept of feminist pedagogy has recently energized current conversations on library instruction, so it is fitting and timely to consider how feminism might intersect with another vital student-centered service the academic library provides: the reference desk. Inspired by the ideas, possibilities, and discussions set …