For many at the heart of the rights revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s, these were times of revolutionary possibility in which the shackles of heteronormativity, white supremacy, and patriarchy could be thrown off. For others seeking to embed legal rights for LGBTQ people, women, and people
of color, integration into social institutions and efforts to win political respectability became core concerns. In this lecture, I argue that the structure of American capitalism, especially in the realm of health care, has always rendered distinctions between liberation and assimilation artificial and oversimplified. The question of exchanging money for a commodity – health care – forms a vitally important topic in the multiple histories of movements for bodily autonomy in the United States since the emergence of second-wave feminism and the sexual revolutions of the 1960s. The struggles to provide care in a mostly privatized system did more than simply expose the economic and social disparities within gender rights movements: debates over money, access, and consumer rights shaped the terms of identity politics in ways unique to the United States.

A ‘zine’ is a written and/or visual piece designed to explore topics of personal interest by nonprofessional (student) writers and artists. The “do-it-yourself,” creative nature of zines has made these projects virtually accessible for anyone to create and consume. Within educational contexts, this medium encourages learners to engage with their world(s) collectively, critically, and creatively in the pursuit of producing and sharing knowledge.

Within a Canadian context, the term ‘Indigenous’ collectively refers to the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples of Turtle Island/North America and is a preferred term in international usage (University of British Columbia, n.d.). Through an Indigenous lens, this presentation will explore the ways in which classrooms can build community through arts-based activities and consider how zine-making is an act of decolonization in process. By exploring the capacity of zines within the classroom, we can better understand the role of arts-based activities in supporting the voices of traditionally marginalized and Othered youth, supporting the idea of utilizing zines as a tool in making identities (“selfing”). Furthermore, we pose the concept decoloniZine: zines created by and for Indigenous people. This is achieved through disrupting colonial forms of knowledge sharing, strengthening communities of creators and consumers, and making room for Indigenous creators to reclaim space in media.

Das Zeitgeistmagazin twen war in den 1960er-Jahren tonangebend in Fragen moderner Lebensführung für junge Menschen. Vor allem als Ikone des Zeitschriftendesigns ist die von Willy Fleckhaus gestaltete Zeitschrift noch heute bekannt. Weniger weiß man über die literarischen und literaturkritischen Beiträge, die einen festen Bestandteil in jedem Heft bildeten. Das ist insofern verwunderlich, da namhafte Autor:innen wie Alfred Andersch, Arno Schmidt, Simone de Beauvoir und Allen Ginsberg in twen publizierten. Der Vortrag geht diesem Bereich exemplarisch nach und fragt dabei, wie Literatur und Literaturkritik im Medium Zeitschrift in Szene gesetzt werden.

Coupling documented artifacts and methodological reflection, this paper will center around cyphering books (alternative spelling ‘ciphering books’) from archives of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century North American education. It will present excerpts from these hand-written mathematical exercise books and reflect upon the productive paradox that the cultural historian faces when studying them. On the one hand, these books often testify to the idea of officialism and longevity; they may be several hundred pages long and exhibit rather rigid genre elements (verbatim noting what the schoolmasters read out; adhering to calligraphic precision). On the other, cyphering books may also document social history, as when the exercises of simple and advanced arithmetic are enriched with personal marginalia, including doodles, puns, poems, spontaneous penmanship exercises, and invectives against other individuals in the classroom.