Media Literacy, Critical Pedagogy, and BIPOC Punks
Barnard Zine Library staffers will present at the Barnard Bold Conference!
Media Literacy, Critical Pedagogy, and BIPOC Punks
Traditional academic readings, even those assigned in critical, feminist classes, often fail to present unmediated personal and lived experiences. At the Barnard Zine Library, we believe that the personal is powerful, especially in academia where dominant narratives are often left unchallenged. This workshop will expose how zines can be used to enhance syllabi and provide students insightful first-person narratives of people otherwise underrepresented on library shelves. The workshop will involve a communal close reading of the seminal 1997 zine Evolution of a Race Riot edited by then 23-year-old Vietnamese-American punk Mimi Thi Nguyen (who is now an associate professor at the University of Illinois). Guided by questions regarding the construction, composition, and content of the zine, participants will discover different approaches to analyzing the components of a zine and how creators' choices impact the reading experience. Participants will then discuss how or if the zine challenged, complemented, and/or complicated their previous understandings of the topic. This workshop focuses on BIPOC activism zines, but there are zines for nearly every topic. Student-led, this workshop's pedagogical goals are increasing participants' media literacy, understanding the role of zines as research resources, and, in the spirit of "nothing about us without us," how materials created by people outside the academy and mainstream media are crucial to a nuanced understanding of social issues.
Workshop leaders include Grace Li BC '24, Alex Owens BC '26, Nayla Delgado BC '24, Claudia Acosta, and Jenna Freedman.