Guide to the Bingham Center Zine Collections

The Bingham Center's zine collection was created when Sarah Dyer gave her collection of over 1,000 zines in the year 2000. Dyer collected zines from women and girls for her Action Girl Newsletter, a networking publication for women’s comics and zines. Sarah Dyer has written an essay called "A Brief History of My Life in Zines," about how she became a zine producer and collector and why she donated her collection to Duke University. Since Dyer’s initial donation, many more authors and collectors have given us their zines, expanding our collection to over 3,500 zines, with a majority dating from 1985-2005.

The Bingham Center collects zines primarily by women, girls, and women-identified people. The Center has long been a leading collector of primary source materials, including self-published and alternatively-published works, relating to the experience of women, girls, and women-identified people. Zines, with their relatively recent emergence, and their popularity among girls and women, are living documents of the continuing narrative of female self-expression.

In order to promote access to our extensive collection, we have created a searchable online database, which includes identifying information from each publication, such as title, author(s), date, location of publication if known, and topics addressed. The database is browsable by region of publication or by topic. This database is a work in progress and will be expanded as we process our collection and add more zines to our archives. 

What is a zine?

Zines are not easily defined. They can be a messy hodgepodge of personal thoughts or an expertly designed political treatise. They can fit easily into a pocket or take up an entire 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. They can be heavily collaged or minimalist; colored or black-and-white; handwritten or typed; stapled, sewn, or loose. The unifying thread is their outside-of-the-mainstream existence as independently written, produced, and distributed media that value freedom of expression and freedom from rules above all else.

Short for fanzines, zines have been in existence since the 1930s, when they served as a form of communication among science fiction fans. In the 1990s, with the combination of the riot grrrl movement's reaction against sexism in punk culture, the rise of third wave feminism and girl culture, and an increased interest in the do-it-yourself lifestyle, the women's and grrrls' zine culture began to thrive. Feminist practice emphasizes the sharing of personal experience as a community-building tool, and zines proved to be the perfect medium for reaching out to young women across the country in order to form the "revolution, girl style."

More about zines 

Brief History of Zines Timeline

My Life in Zines essay by Sarah Dyer

My Life in Zines interview with Alexis Gumbs and Jaime Danehey
Originally aired on WUNC's radio program The State of Things

Guide created by Amy McDonald and Kelly Wooten