The University of Pennsylvania is set to host an upcoming workshop on creating homemade feminist magazines.
According to a report from The College Fix, the University of Pennsylvania has scheduled a “Zine Making” workshop for feminist students. “Zines” are small-circulation, often homemade, magazines that feature articles that typically share a similar theme.
“Zines have been a powerful tool for feminist politics and communities, and for gathering historically-marginalized voices, practices and ideas,” the description for the event reads. “How can zines help articulate a feminist set of ethics for teaching? What would a zine for feminist pedagogy be able to teach us?”
“In the second session, we will bring all of our solicited and written content together and start zine production. Put another way, in session one, we talk, brainstorm, outline, draw and write,” the listing adds. “In session two, we cut, paste, copy and staple. The aim is for this workshop to be as collaborative and inclusive as possible. All perspectives on and experiences of feminist teaching and learning practices are welcome!”
The event is part of a series of workshops entitled “Beyond Free Speech and Safe Space,” which aims to create “spaces” for students to explore minority perspectives.
The description for the series explains that it was created in response to the recent criticism of the university as an environment that stifles free and open expression. The description claims that the series will disrupt the discourse that insists campuses are a binary, either in favor of “free speech” or ” safe spaces.”
In this moment of heightened reactiveness in public discourses and on college campuses about who is permitted to speak and about what topics, it is difficult to create spaces for nuanced discussion. Who decides what is permissible speech? What is at stake when voices are silenced or speakers are subject to social media surveillance? Working from the premises that public engagement is by definition neither truly free nor truly safe, Beyond Free Speech and Safe Space is devoted to exploring the practices and interpretive possibilities that are typically foreclosed when expression is framed as a matter of either “free speech” or “safe space.”
Other workshops during the series include “Trans Literary Project,” “Grassroots Organizing in the Era of #MeToo,” and “It’s Not Funny: The Subversive Politics of Comedy.”
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