Zine production is a multimodal lesson, that does not have to be digital, which offers twenty-first century students an opportunity to write honestly and from the heart about issues relevant to their lives. The Viva La Revolution!: Zine Writing, Publishing, & Distributing assignment will allow students to experience empowerment as authors and producers. They will gain a better understanding of purpose, authorship, and audience in the rhetorical situation of zine writing.Â
An argument that teaching zines in the classroom compromises the form of the genre can be posited. Zines inherently are an underground, urban, street form of expression. However, opening the dialogue about the differences in genre will perhaps widen a student's rhetorical understanding about context: purpose, audience, and text. The production of "authentic" zines in the classroom may prove to be a challenge riddled with complication. Nevertheless, the unit can used to fulfill the Standard 3: Writing and Composing of the Colorado Academic Standards. Students can be taught to understand that even though what they create "inside" the classroom may not meet the standards of street credibility "outside" the classroom, the writing and composing skills are transferable. Students can be further taught that these "in-school" and "out-of-school" lines can become intermingled.