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Last Updated: Sep 8th, 2009 - 08:07:52 |
RESOURCES
More course ideas than you can shake a computer mouse at!
by John Ohliger
May 10, 1993
The new Penguin paperback The World of Zines is a handy resource with many useful class ideas.
Zines -- innovative but offbeat periodicals -- are hard to find. In this book you'll learn how to obtain more than 300 publications with new and different views on travel, sports, music, hobbies, science fiction, politics, sex and other topics not ordinarily offered in the standard course brochures. In addition, The World of Zines provides solid help starting your own publication with little money.
For ten years Mike Gunderloy, the book's co-editor, published the quarterly Factsheet Five to inform people about trend-setting ideas not appearing in mainstream magazines. Is ACET a zine? Gunderloy gave space to over a dozen issues of ACET next to such publications as Reality Sandwich, The Kansas Intelligencer, and The Upright Ostrich.
Gunderloy and I first met in 1987 when Professor Phyllis Cunningham from Northern Illinois University and I invited him to come to Syracuse University to meet with members of an adult education seminar. Since then I've been trying to figure out the shape the publications he reviews fit into.
One difficulty in finding a pattern for Gunderloy's reviews are his views on technology. Either it's the greatest invention since sliced bread or it threatens to enslave us all. His more baleful attitudes are obvious in his descriptions of the zines. For instance, Gunderioy says one criticizing computers is edited by "sane and sensible people who are fascinated by the systems controlling our lives." Systems do control our lives, but they still would, whether or not the computer had been invented.
I think I've finally worked out the pattern in The World of Zines. It's "regionalist," maybe even "bioregionalist." A regionalist is anyone dismayed by the centralized power of large nations and who believes breaking up the world into smaller portions will counteract such oppression. Zines are attempts to reclaim very small portions of the world, though they do sometimes confuse a mail network with real community or places.
The latest person to join the regionalist bandwagon is establishment intellectual, George F. Kennan.
Kennan is the former ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and author of 18 books. In his newest one he advocates breaking up the U.S. into a dozen "constituent republics."
Kirkpatrick Sale, is the most authoritative voice on bioregionalism.
Sale connects the bioregional movement with such other movements as the Green parties, Native Americans, decentralists, the "Fourth Worlds, and people working for ecofeminism, alternative technology, peace, and deep ecology."
These groups are well represented in The World of Zines. To provide information on the references above, I have prepared a 30 page, 60 item annotated bibliography. For biblography send $5 to Basic Choices/Zines P.O. Box 9598, Madison, WI 53725—9508.
LERN has granted non-exclusive permission to this website to post any articles written by John Ohliger for Adult and Continuing Education Today.
© Copyright 2004 John Ohliger.com
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