Research at NYPL, Doc Chat

Doc Chat Episode Twenty-Five: History in the (Zine) Making

On April 22, 2021, Doc Chat dug into an exciting and creative way to teach and make history with the Library's collections: zine-making.

Schomburg student-made zines
Zines made by students from Beginning with Children Charter School in the Bronx

weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Twenty-Five, Bridgett Pride and Kadiatou Tubman of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture discussed ways that they have used zines and zine-making projects to help students of all ages explore historical research, express their creativity, and envision themselves as historians.

Doc Chat Episode 25: History in the (Zine) Making from The New York Public Library on Vimeo.

A transcript of this event is available here.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Twenty-Five: Primary Sources 

Bridgett and Kadiatou recommend that educators explore and print digitized reproductions of primary sources from NYPL's Digital Collections. Explore materials from the Schomburg Center's Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Division here

Episode Twenty-Five: Readings and Resources 

Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, "Why Diverse Zines Matter: A Case Study of the People of Color Zines Project," Publishing Research Quarterly, 33(3): 215–28.

Red Chidgey, "The Resisting Subject: Per-zines as life story data," University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 10 (2006).

Stephen Duncombe, Notes from the Underground: Zines and the politics of Alternative Culture (Microcosm Publishing, 2008).

Bridgett Kathryn Pride, "Reading and Creating Black Zines" (PDF) Research and Project Guide, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.

Alycia Sellie, "Backward C inside a Circle: Free Culture in Zines," Ph.D. Dissertation, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2014. 

Join the Doc Chat Conversation

Doc Chat episodes take place on Zoom every Thursday at 3:30 PM.  During May we will cover a range of topics: the history of pop culture, LGBTQ+ struggles against criminalization, Russian propaganda posters, and much more.

Check out upcoming episodes on NYPL's calendar,  and make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter, which will include links to register. A video of each episode will be posted on the Research Channel of the NYPL blog shortly after the program. There you can also explore videos and resources for past episodes. See you at the next Doc Chat!