Making Space—Radical Literary Movements and Community-Making through ‘zines and Lit Mags

What experiences have you longed to see represented in books, magazines, journals, comics? In what ways do you think art and literature can inuence identity, can forge community, can change a life? In this experiential learning course, we will explore these questions both by learning about literature and creating our own. In the classroom, we will engage with readings, lecture, and discussion that will focus on learning about the systemic and structural inequalities of the publishing industry that has and continues to favor white, male, cis, heteronormative, neurotypical, and able-bodied people, but more particularly we will devote ourselves to learning about the community-centered movements, presses, and projects (such as Kitchen Table Press, the Riot Grrrl zine movement, present-day Rowhouse Publishing, and more) that have and continue to challenge those industry norms and create space for more voices in literature (while also critiquing any further failings of representation within some movements). For the experiential component of the course, we will put this space-making into practice ourselves: we will make literature and form community within and outside of the classroom through the creation and sharing of the collective nal project—a literary arts magazine (or ‘zine). As such, this course isn’t just about histories—this course is about what kind of literature you want in the world.