Disruption in the Stacks: Using Zines to Make Space for Creativity, Outreach and Social Justice

Through a process of duoethnography, the authors Cunningham and Matsushima Chiu engage in a shared dialogue that critically investigates the authors' relationships with zines and how they have individually and collaboratively utilized zine libraries, zine workshops, zines in library instruction and organizing zine festivals. These zine activities seek to actively disrupt the Eurocentric canon and not merely diversify, but recenter the canon. Zines as primary source narratives from Black, Indigenous, and people of color, as well as art objects, workshops and classroom engagement pushes the canon to refocus. The following discussion will use the Reed Zine Library at Reed College located in Portland, Oregon as its primary illustration.