Hi, I’m Lee Hoffman (pronouns: They/Them),
This academic year, I will be researching independent alternative presses under the guidance of Dr. Weijer. Specifically, I will look at historical publications that were created and published independently, without a larger publishing entity. These publications took many forms before desktop publishing software or social media, such as pamphlets, zines, and newsletters.
Even though their audience is small compared to the output of publishers and mass media outlets, they let a single person or small group control every part of the process of making and distributing information. Intrinsically, people create independently published material because they have something to say, and I want to listen. We can uncover the depth of humanity in the unfiltered ideas that people have written.
Last spring, I had the opportunity to intern with the PK Yonge Library of Florida History Florida Special Collections, where I worked on a small counterculture publication called the Great Speckled Bird. I schemed to find a way to continue haunting the archives. One fateful day, I had a conversation with Dr. Weijer. I was wearing a shirt that read “What’s more punk than a public library?” which prompted him to ask if I had ever been to the Civic Media Center, Gainesville’s DIY alternative library. Not only had I been to the Civic Media Center, but that dusty library had become a haven for me.
The Civic Media Center holds the largest collection of Zines in the southeastern United States. Zines are an example of independently published material, but conceptually they’re so much more than that. They give us clues in to the authors and audiences that used them – sometimes they deliberately hide that information or leave it out entirely. My favorite zine from the collection (shown in this post) has almost none of the information you’d find in a published book. As I research the historical evolution of small independent press and zines, I hope to uncover more of these connections between creators, their audiences, and the technologies they used and hacked in order to spread their messages.
