Around 25 U-M undergraduates, faculty, and graduate students gathered at the Institute for the Humanities on October 15, 2025 for “An Evening of Zine Creation.” This event was created by the Public Humanities Interns, whose goal was to create space for participants to get hands-on experience making zines and think critically about the mediums they employ to express arguments, opinions, and stories.
The event began with a short zine mini-history lecture, given by Sweetland Center for Writing Lecturer Dr. Shelley Manis. In this lecture, Dr. Manis went over the beginnings of zine-making, genres of zine, how zinesters have gone about distributing their work, prompt possibilities for participants, and what makes zines so important to creators concerned about social justice. Participants had the opportunity to view zines about academia, horror, fandoms, and television to spur inspiration before the workshop.
Following the lesson, participants were able to make their own zine, pursuing whatever creative impulse they wanted. Participants were guided through the folding of ¼ mini zine-fold and were able to create zines using a variety of materials. They created zines on stories, things they wanted to “resist” at the moment, and media that they were thinking critically about now. The Public Humanities Interns and the Institute staff were pleased to host everyone, and look forward to welcoming more community members for future Institute events.
