OUTSIDERS: Zines, Samizdat, and Alternative Publishing

This year’s symposium will explore the use of self-produced books and pamphlets to express individualized, unconventional, controversial, or prohibited messages. Topics will range widely in historical and geographical terms, and the speakers will address the current state of self-publishing as well as its history.

8:30 am Coffee

9 am Welcome
Bruce H. Boyer, President, The Caxton Club
Moderator, Paul F. Gehl, Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing, The Newberry Library

9:15 - 10:45 am Session I
Lisa Gitelman, Associate Professor of Media and English, New York University
Amateurs and Their Discontents, 1870-2000

Ann Komaromi, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Inside, Outside, Around, and Through: Conceptualist Publishing in the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

10:45 - 11:15 am Coffee break

11:15 am - 1:30 pm Session II

Jenna Freedman, Zine Librarian, Barnard College Library
Pinko vs. Punk: a Generational Comparison of Alternative Press Publications and Zines

Panel Discussion: Self-Publishing as an Alternative Strategy
Moderator, Alice Schreyer, Assistant University Librarian for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Special Collections, The University of Chicago Library
Davida G. Breier, Editor, Xerography Debt and Rigor Mortis
Johanna Drucker, Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor of Information Studies, UCLA
Anne Elizabeth Moore, Instructor, Visual and Critical Studies, School of the Art Institute
Steve Tomasula, Associate Professor of English, University of Notre Dame
The morning’s speakers will join the panelists for Q&A.