Across any discipline, one of the most crucial aspects of research is effectively conveying your work’s purpose and significance to broader audiences. This responsibility has been heavily present within my mind while exploring my current project about Black visibility through activism. My topic is a reflection of the timeless nature of public engagement by handmade, easily sharable media. My research delves into the United States’s most prominent bursts of civil outcry, highlighting political posters calling for the end of the Vietnam War and the immortal image of the Black Panther across the digital realm. Protest signage has rapidly adapted amidst the changing of time and technology, yet the reasons for why it is employed have hardly changed. Accessibility and activism go hand-in-hand in this sense, as community of the masses creates change. Physical forms of protest, or tangible items of thought and proponents of action, are a brilliant mode of communicating such change among any audience. This particular form of media offers a detailed declaration of liberation. My long journey of research will ultimately birth a zine, an iconic form of activism employed for the purpose of not only accessibility but for connection.
The craft of zine-making has been around since the 1940s, but it became a distinguishable mode of spreading political ideas in the 1960s. They are comprised of appropriated text and images bound together into booklets or pamphlets, self-published and circulated around niche circles or into wider audiences. They serve the purpose of providing voice to the censored or silenced. One zine may recall the intimate accounts of protesters during the Civil Rights Movement while another may expose the perverse threats that capitalism poses upon fledgling artists. Zines are unfiltered, raw art objects that allow anyone to explore a realm in which they have never entered. They are digestible and easy to make, and even more community-oriented now than ever before. The increase in independent, small business print shops ensure the longevity of such a craft.
Upon reflection of readings about research purposes and significance statements, there are particular strategies that I have found to help effectively engage with a general audience about the pursuits of Black liberation under white supremacy. This topic requires a discussion relying upon much patience and openness, both to learn and to enact in the name of change. This is especially true when analyzing how Black subjectivity has historically afforded less thorough discussion or accurate representation. The objectification of Black people is nothing new – it extends across time as far back as the American chattel slavery system. We see the continuation of the Black body as an object throughout a number of fields, often times serving as a mere vessel for profitable labor. This is what makes my research so important to someone outside of my field, as we can all benefit from coming together to dissect the historical systems that oppress us. White supremacy permeates all – no field is shielded from the effects of such a devastating dread.
When thinking about my current professional goals, I plan to continue this exploration of methods into distributing ideas, particularly through zine-making. Working alongside community members, and other creatives is an opportunity I will do my best to have in the future, possibly even in my undergrad. Audiences outside my field that I would potentially need to interact with while pursuing such a goal are, of course other Black contributors, scholars, and students. Those with backgrounds in not only the humanities but sciences and any other realm that could be tied to my interests. If on the subject of white supremacy, it could be a number of different fields. This project is merely the final draft to the next I have in mind. I cannot wait to see where the start of this journey takes me!
