Report on Janice Radway’ lecture

“Zines Then and Now: 

What Are They? What Do You Do With Them? How Do They Work?”

Janice Radway, the Walter Dill Professor of Communication and professor of American studies and gender studies at Northwestern University, gave a lecture about social impact and literary role of zines on American society on Nov.17.

Prof. Radway first discussed the definition and scope of zines—“A zine (an abbreviation of the word fanzine, or magazine) is most commonly a small circulation, non-commercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images”—as she showed us the definition on Wikipedia and the sample of zines on slide show, she brought up the question “what else people can do with it but read it (like a book)”. Indeed, just like books , people engaged in zinging more than read them ,at the same time, they have their own subjectivity thinking, they are participating in different kind of activities and performances which connected with social relations and culture values.

In Prof. Radway’s investigation on girls’ zines , a lot of girls who engaged in zinging actively in 1990s have given up as they turned to their twenties or thirties at the turn of 21 century --the information era. While actually, zines moved on, too. So how do zines function over time?

Prof. Radway gave some examples of girls’ zines collections which are quite representative. She studied what girls’ zines are and how zines connected with girls and other zines from these cases. Here’re some conclusions by myself from here speech--zines are (mostly) made by girls, for girls; they are a way to depict how girls think ,write and respond to the society to express themselves; they have charms and they’re highly miscellaneous forms “displaying a wild mixture of handwriting and print”; they touch on sex, punk music, movie stars, diet & beauty, whatever may be hot conversation topics the next day in school among classmates, which is how they help to build up alliances, friendships and sisterhoods, they’re part of the social community; zines are always related to zines, you can often see one recommend another, just like the social network between people, they “re-circulate culture discourses” and “alter them by juxtaposing and combining them”.

As Professor Radway concluded, zines bring hopes to a different future and the social construction. And in this high-tech era, whether paper zines or e-zines, I believe, zines will never grow old, it will continue even in a new media and area, bearing girls’ dream , self-excitation, sweetness, or any characteristics that made it such a charming thing within modern media publishing.