The Department of English will offer Feminist Zine Writing (ENC 4930-RVD) this Fall D session.
Social critiques, personal diary rants and impassioned protests are just some of the topics commonly discussed within feminist zines. Zines are able to bypass traditional gate-keeping mechanisms that silence non-dominant voices and perspectives. As a result, zines offer a platform upon which feminists of all genders are using words, images and other non-violent discursive practices to advocate for equity, mobilize activist efforts and build and sustain community.
The course explores feminist zines as primary texts in order to understand their social impact and activist potential. Students will engage in regular class discussions, complete a video zine review in which they analyze the rhetorical conventions of the feminist zine genre and create zines.
Students in this course do not need to identify as feminist or have any previous experiences with zines. The course is open to anyone interested in the ways in which we can use writing and rhetoric to act in the world, build community, advocate for justice and inspire hope.
Instructor Christine Martorana will teach this course online.
Professor Martorana specializes in rhetoric and composition and feminist agency. Martorana aims to help students see writing as an inherently social and context-specific activity. She believes writing is an avenue through which we construct and maintain relationships with the people and worlds around us, especially as we use writing to act in the world. To promote this view of writing in the classroom, she adopts a feminist and participatory perspective that leads her to privilege a multimodal and collaborative pedagogy.
