|
Rebekah B.: Zine
Survey (pdf) (Temple University, Urban Education Program, Philadelphia,
USA, 2003/2004)
"(...) As part of a class on gender issues (and hopefully
a longer study), I want to examine what zines teach the girls and women who read
and create them; how zines empower girls and women, explore gender issues that
society does not address, and create a world of social justice. Please take the
time to fill out my survey and return it to me. (...)"
Rebekah B.:
<rebekahb [at] temple [dot] edu>
|
Chelsey
Flood: Institutional Case Study on Riot Grrrl (pdf) (Falmouth
College of Arts in Cornwall, UK, 2003)
Chelsey
Flood:<chelmonkey [at] hotmail [dot] com>
|
Jenn
Frederick: Breaking the Waves: Continuities and Discontinuities Between Second
and Third Wave Feminism.
A
thesis in progress (web site) [college
and year unknown] http://home.comcast.net/~theennead/bean/breakingwaves.htm
Jenn
Frederick: <jlfred [at] attbi [dot] com>
| Annie
Knight: Scratching the Surface: Zines in Libraries
(pdf) (San Jose State University, School of Library
and Information Science, USA, May 2004
Annie Knight: <digress [at] 9250x [dot] com>
|
Lettie Conrad: Third wave feminism: A case study of BUST magazine (pdf)
(Master's thesis at California State University, Northridge, 2001)
Contact: <lettieconrad [at] yahoo [dot] com>
|
Sarah
Maitland: Riot Grrrl (pdf) (Virginia Commonwealth University
in Richmond, Virginia, USA, 2002)
"The
following is a paper I wrote on Riot Grrrl for my Social Movements and Social
Change class last semester (Fall 2002), a Sociology class taught by Dr. David
Croteau and sometimes offered at the university I attend, Virginia Commonwealth
University in Richmond, Virginia. The paper had to discuss the three important
parts of social movements: structural conditions and grievances, political opportunity,
and mobilizing structure. The last part of the paper had to be our own analysis
of the movement."
Sarah
Maitland: <thatimpossiblesound [at] yahoo [dot] com>
The paper is also available at: http://www.violeteyes.net/dotmatrix/rgpaper.html
| Perris,
Kate. Unearthing the underground: a comparative study of zines in libraries.
Dissertation for the MA in Information Services Management at London Metropolitan
University, August 2004. See
pdf file.
Abstract:
This study examined the treatment of zine collections in various libraries. Most
were academic libraries based in the US but data was also obtained on public and
UK based libraries. An open questionnaire was administered via email to staff
in libraries hosting zine collections. This questionnaire found that zine collections
vary greatly in size. Most collections were broad in focus although a few collected
only geographically local zines and all the libraries focussed on women's collections
collected zines either about or by women only. Most zine collections were found
to have begun due to the impetus of a committed individual or on receipt of a
significant donation of zines. Donation was also found to be the main method of
obtaining new zines. Reasons given for collecting zines including documenting
a wide range of viewpoints and experiences (particularly women's experiences)
and encouraging creativity. Most collections sought to catalogue zines individually
although only a few have done so and this has proved difficult given an absence
of clear bibliographic information. Nevertheless librarians in this field have
demonstrated that they have the will to overcome such difficulties.
Kate
Perris: <kate_galactic
[at] rocketmail [dot] com>
|
Whitney, Eleanor: Making Media, Making Meaning: Zines and Critical Consciousness in Young Women. Senior Work Project, Eugene Lang College, Cultural Studies Concentration. New York , New York, May 12, 2005. Table of Content (pdf), Senior Work Project (pdf).
Eleanor: <killerfemme [at] yahoo [dot] com>
|
Hillary
Belzer: Words + Guitar: The Riot Grrrl Movement and Third-Wave Feminism
(Thesis, Georgetown University, USA, 2004)
Abstract The
third wave of feminism, which began roughly in the early 1990s, is distinguished
by its insistence on multiple definitions of feminism and the embracing of differences
between women. Comprised mostly of women who were too young to participate in
second-wave activism in the 70s and 80s, this generation believes
anyone can create her own feminism, and that it is essential for the feminist
movement to recognize the diversity of women in order to advance their equality.
Due to the new role of mass media in the 90s, third-wavers are also more
concerned with the cultural representation of women and its effects than their
second-wave counterparts. The
Riot Grrrl movement consisted of a diffuse network of young women interested in
challenging male hegemony both within the underground punk scene and society in
general. Riot Grrrl first started in Olympia, Washington when a few women formed
bands and held women-only meetings in which girls could discuss the ways sexism
informed their everyday lives. Riot Grrrl was characterized by certain punk philosophies,
most notably DIY (do-it-yourself), in that girls actively engaged in cultural
production, creating their own music and fanzines rather than following existing
materials. It also reflected several aspects of third-wave feminism: body image
concerns, the resistance to societal demands for female perfection, support of
diversity, and the redefinition of the word feminist along with girl."
Words + Guitar:
the Riot Grrrl Movement and Third-Wave Feminism seeks to provide an understanding
of the Riot Grrrl phenomenon as well as attempt to situate this movement within
the context of third-wave feminism. I discuss Riot Grrrl as a concrete manifestation
of the third wave of feminism and utilize it as a case study for examining how
postmodern philosophy, cultural theory, and political history have been woven
together to produce a new form of feminism. Riot Grrrl was one of the many expressions
of third-wave ideals and issues, and helps us navigate and comprehend the diffuse,
contradictory nature of the third wave. Thus Riot Grrrl is useful in understanding
how young feminists are forging resistance to sexism in American culture.
http://cct.georgetown.edu/thesis/HillaryBelzer.pdf (pdf webpage inactive 23/02/2006)
| Jennifer
F. Eisenhauer: What is a girl? Producing subjects in feminist and visual culture
pedagogies (PhD dissertation, Pennsylvania State University,
Advisor: Yvonne Gaudelius, 2003)
Abstract This
study is a theoretical investigation into the construction of "girl";
subjects in educational and feminist discourses. In asking "What is a girl",
this inquiry locates the question of the "girl" as integral to
critically addressing normative understandings and definitions within feminist
and educational discourses. This study suggests that the "girl" subject
is not simply that which education and feminist researchers write about,
but rather examines how the"girl" subject and the assumptions guiding
what he/she is presumed to be are produced through educational and feminist
research. In addition, questioning the production of subjects within feminist
and educational theory simultaneously draws attention not only to the politics
of language, but also to its critical and disruptive potentiality. This dissertation
locates the question “What is a "girl" in an atmosphere of
increased research related to girl cultures in the 1990s. This study begins by
examining the discursive construction of "girl" subjects within the
intersections of multiple disciplines including the emerging discourse of Girls'
Studies, research focused upon “girl” subjects in cultural
studies, critical media studies and feminist educational theory and writing on
feminist generations and waves. By questioning the normative hierarchies formed
through the constitution of “girl” subjects as future
women and future feminists reflected in feminist generational metaphors,
this study examines the potential of alternative metaphors of becoming
and examines their implications for art education and feminist research. After
first critiquing teleological constructions of coming of age and becoming reflected
in Enlightenment subjectivity and the Bildungsroman genre, this study interprets
the film Ma Vie en Rose and Post-Riot Grrrl zine networks as reflecting
non-linear and rhizomatic metaphors of becoming that complicate sex/gender categories.
This study concludes by tracing the implications of postmodern theories of subjectivity
in art education research. This study emphasizes theorizing visual culture arts
education as a theoretical shift necessitating a critical address of the means
through which subjects and particularly student subjects are produced through
the language of visual culture theory.
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/preview/3111208
| Doreen
Marie Piano: Congregating Women: Reading the rhetorical arts of third wave
subcultural production
(PhD dissertation, Bowling Green State
University, Advisor: Kristine Blair, 2003)
Abstract My dissertation
entitled Congregating Women: Reading the Rhetorical Arts of Third Wave Subcultural
Production analyzes the production and reception of texts known as "zines";
As an alternative media system, zines are independently produced publications
created by and for a particular group of people who use them to communicate ideas,
polemics, obsessions, and passions. In this study, I analyze a group of women
writers who use low- and high-end technologies to produce zines. Although many
of the women who currently produce zines do not identify as a riot grrrl, the
impetus behind their production originated in an underground feminist movement
of the early 1990s known as "riot grrrl." The movement's emphasis on
do-it-yourself (DIY) practices - taking cultural production into one's own hands
through self-publishing - as an ethical and political stance against male-dominance
in alternative culture paved the way for a third wave subcultural feminist movement
to take place. Thus, this project argues that through their multiple uses of technology,
modes of autobiographical writing, and engagement with gender issues, this group
of women utilizes various rhetorical practices to foster a third wave feminist
subculture. Because zines operate on the peripheries of mainstream discourses,
their study can reveal how subcultural communities negotiate with dominant culture
over issues of power, identity, representation, and agency. In addition by analyzing
their cultural production rhetorically, focusing particularly on the classical
canons, delivery and style, as well as the classical appeal, ethos,
I provide an in-depth analysis of discourse production that takes into account
the production, distribution, and reception of these texts.
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3114948
| | |
abstracts |
Jenny
Gunnarsson, Umeå University, Sweden.
Threatening Sisterhood? Reflexivity and Hegemony in the Study of a Radical Feminist Zine
Fourth Essex Graduate Conference in Political
Theory Rhetoric and Politics University of Essex - Department of Government
9-10 May, 2003
The aim of this conference paper is to explore the problems
with and possible ways of using what is commonly referred to as "reflexivity"
within areas such as ethnology, anthropology and sociology in a study using
the analytical tools of discourse theory. The main focus will be Ernesto Laclau's
and Chantal Mouffe's discussions of different modes of hegemonic logics, and
how one can use their ideas of logics of
difference and equivalence to analyze
not only the objects of study, but also to illuminate how the researcher creates
the world he or she studies. In this paper this will be discussed in relation
to one specific case, which is part of the material used for my Ph.D thesis.
The idea of sisterhood is central for the "zinesters" studied, though
it takes different forms in different contexts, and therefore produces different
kinds of
political identities and practices. The articulation of sisterhood
in this specific case is closely related to radical feminism, which is based
on what in the post-structuralist field is called an essentialist idea of
gender, an idea which I as a scholar do not agree with. The use, therefore,
of post-structuralist theories in analyzing these texts, may be
regarded as
a problem - especially since the zinesters of Radarka (the name of this specific
zine) regard post-structuralism as one of the greatest threats against what they concieve of as "real feminism" and "real sisterhood". Radarka
on the one hand regards the researcher as a "sister" who is included
in the sisterhood. On the other hand, this sister can be regarded as a threat
to the very same sisterhood. This paper
discusses possible solutions for this
kind of ethical and political dilemma in research.
| Anna
Feigenbaum, McGill University Girls! Girls! Grrrls?:
(Re)Conceptualising a Feminist Punk interrogating
post-feminism: The Politics of Gender and Popular Culture An international
conference on post-feminism and popular culture Television Studies
School of English and American Studies University of East Anglia, Norwich,
UK April 2-3 2004 http://www.uea.ac.uk/eas/postfeminism/
The late 1970s punk movement, though largely misogynist
and homophobic, allowed a few female punk performers to gain recognition. These
musicians (Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith) cleared ground for the Riot Grrrl movement
in the early 1990s. Through women-oriented shows and mosh pits to a 1992 media-blackout,
the Riot Grrrl movement brought feminist issues to the forefront. But since the
Riot Grrrl collective dispersed, and their politics are said to have failed, few
female punk bands have been able to effect any real change or challenge to (punk)
rock culture's sexist standards and structures. During
the last few years there has been an upsurge of successful female pop-punk artists
(Avril Lavigne, Pink, The Donnas). However, unlike their predecessors, these acts
are not founded on (political) punk or feminist objectives. Moreover, the mainstream
success of such artists often masks the contributions of musicians still working
out of or alongside Riot Grrrl objectives (Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, Ani Difranco).
In this
paper I argue for a (re)conceptualisation of a "feminist punk." By mapping
a genealogy of women's influence on and interactions with "punk"-as
a generic term as well as a form of music production and performance-I address
punk's potential as a site for political resistance. Locating, in particular,
various constructions of female agency offered by contemporary (pop) punk acts,
I discuss how the emergence and proliferation of post-feminist attitudes and values
have contributed to the depoliticisation of "punk".
| Rebecca
Munford, University of Exeter Bad
Girls and Rebellious Daughters: Girl Power and the (A)politics of Post-Feminism
interrogating post-feminism: The Politics of Gender
and Popular Culture An international conference on post-feminism and popular
culture Television Studies School of English and American Studies
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK April 2-3 2004 http://www.uea.ac.uk/eas/postfeminism/
In her discussion of 'girl power' in The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer laments the
'catastrophic career of "girls," "girls behaving badly," "girls
on top."' (399) having denounced three decades earlier the 'relentless enculturation'
and stereotypes of female passivity and modesty to which girls were subjected
in The Female Eunuch (92), she identifies an equally, if not more, insidious form
of indoctrination in the construction and marketing of 'girl power' - that is,
of the paraphernalia of sexualised femininity - to girls and young women by the
media: 'to deny a woman's sexuality is certainly to oppress her but to portray
her as nothing but a sexual being is equally to oppress her.' (410-11) the trajectory
of Greer's analysis thus highlights a discursive shift from the decorous 'good
girl' to the sexually aggressive 'bad girl' in popular constructions of girlhood
and its representations - a Madonna/whore dichotomy that is all too familiar.
This paper will explore the (a)politics of Girlie culture and the Riot Grrrl within
post-feminism. The extent to which the Riot Grrrl and Girlie have positioned themselves
- and been positioned - in an antagonistic relationship with second wave feminism
bears out Lynne Segal's suggestion in Why Feminism? That intergenerational conflict
has been embedded in accounts of feminist histories and, crucially, the wave paradigm
(205). It is one of the paradoxes of girl culture, then, that while is refuses
to surrender a prediscursive structure for girls' and young women's subjectivity,
it positions itself in an antagonistic relation to generation. In this light,
third wave configurations of girl culture can usefully be understood as dramatising
one of the central contradictions confronting young feminists. It is this blending
of (third wave or post-feminist) poststructuralist strategies with (second wave)
identity politics, that provides a space for a reconsideration of the political
viability of configurations of 'ironic femininity' as allowing for a notion of
feminist agency. The danger in girl culture - and in the wave paradigm more generally
- is that it reiterates the trope of mother-daughter conflict. Reinforcing this
intergenerational schism - and ghettoising feminist histories - opens up a space
for patriarchal recuperation as girl power emerges as the site of that dangerous
and deceptive slippage between third wave feminism and post-feminism.
| Eichorn,
K. (2001). Sites unseen: ethnographic
research in a textual community. International Journal of Qualitative
Studies in Education (QSE), 14(4), 565-578. Recent
writing on the subject of ethnography has sought to examine the field not only
as a place where research is carried out, but also as a methodological construction.
While this writing emphasizes the extent to which people's experiences of community
and culture can no longer be necessarily understood in relation to geographically
based locations, it often continues to assert the "legacy of the field"
(Clifford, 1997, p. 88) and its accompanying expectations and practices. In this
article, I draw on my experience of doing ethnographic research in the textual
community of 'zines in order to challenge the assumption that ethnographic fieldwork
is necessarily dependent on physical displacement, and face-to-face encounters
with our research participants. Specific attention is paid to the epistemological
and ethical issues that emerge when one chooses to carry out research in textual
communities. Intentionally foregrounding the parallels between the textual community
of 'zines and the virtual communities associated with the Internet, this article
also raises important questions for ethnographers carrying out research in networked
environments. | guides |
Matt Holdaway: A Student's Guide on What a Zine Is and Tips on How to Make
One
Version 2.0 (Berkeley, California, USA, 2004)
"This guide is meant to introduce what a zine is, a brief history of independent
publishing, tips on how to make your own zine and information about getting your
zine reviewed, into a library, a store and online. It is also meant to provide
information about zine fests, e-zines, distros and e-groups." Matt Holdaway:
<mattvoices@yahoo.com> | |
articles |
China
Martens:
A
Subjective History of Mama Zines/Organizations and Related Topics.
(2004) Claire
Villacorta: Zines
for (a) Living. (pdf) Manila, Philippines. Note from the author:
Zines For (A) Living" (January 2002) was initially published in Mr. &
Ms. Magazine as part of this feminist insert called XYZine. The article was part
of XYZine's themed issue on "alternative businesses", though I made
it clear that no money can be made from zinemaking. Includes basic info on zines,
local girl-authored zines in existence, distro highs and woes and getting zines
on the internet.
Claire
Villacorta: Where's
the Riot? Girl
zinesters and girl scenesters in the Philippines (pdf) Manila,
Philippines. Note from the author: "Where is the Riot? Girl zinesters and
girl scenesters in the Philippines" on the other hand, was writtien for issue
#4 of Sapling Thoughts zine (released May 2001). Sapling Thoughts is a feminist
zine from Laguna, Philippines, and is published by Karen Ison. Here, I try to
find a relationship between the Revolution Grrrl Style Now that took place in
the U.S. and the Pinay zines that came out in the '90s, most notably in 1996,
given the cultural backdrop of a male-dominated punk scene and its longer history
of zinemaking.
| | |