I have just returned from AAA in Toronto, the annual and massive anthropology conference, and I am feeling very happy to be an anthropologist. I met up with old friends, made new ones, ate well with all the food scholars, and presented a paper to six very brave and not-even-too-bleary-eyed attendees at an 8am Saturday morning panel (after a Friday evening full of very raucous parties).

I had known not to expect many people at my panel, so I wasn’t disappointed by the small turnout. Instead, I had come prepared to share my work in other ways too!

In the halls of the convention center, one runs into so many people who inevitably ask “Are you presenting a paper?” One knows that this friend or acquaintance will almost certainly not attend one’s panel (because there are seemingly forty panels in each time slot!) but they are genuinely interested in what one is working on. So this year, I made a zine version of my talk that I could hand out to those friends and acquaintances – they would get a taste of my work to take home, and (bonus!) the attendees at my panel got the zine as a visual aid for my talk instead of a powerpoint.

What is a zine? you might ask. It’s a small, self-published booklet, rooted in punk and anarchy traditions and increasingly beloved by DIY-ers everywhere. You can find more information here!

It was a fun challenge to condense my talk into a one-page visual collage, and I look forward to further exploring this kind of self-publishing.

And now, in an interesting twist, I bring my little print project to the screen. Scroll on for photos and video of the zine. If you’d like me to mail you a paper copy of the zine, message me through the Contact page with your address.

Many thanks to Dan Suslak, Rachel Seymour, Ben Bridges, and Nikolina Zenović for feedback on my zine, and to Robin Gunderson for taking these photos and this video.