F’18 ENG 102.

10 & 11

Unit Three: “Moving Books”

Maker Assignment
DUE: Tuesday, December 4th

Prompt: For this semester so far, we have been looking at books in traditional forms: codices
with two covers, a spine, and stacks of pages. In Unit Three: “Moving Books,” we are going to
turn our critical eye to alternative book formats that challenge the notion we have of books as
factory-made, industrial objects. We will looking especially at what we call “ephemera,” written
or printed materials, originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.
The types of handmade ephemera we will be working with include scrap paper, broadsides,
hand-stitched chapbooks, and zines.

For assignment #3, you will be making your own piece ephemera: a zine that reinterprets a
theme from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Guidelines:
1. You will choose a specific zine format:
a. Multipage
i. A folio-style (pages folded in half); binding (staple, stitch, hole punch) 3
sheets of paper
ii. A multi-page quarto-style (pages folded in quarters); binding (staple,
stitch, hole punch) 6 sheets of paper
b. Single-page
i. eight-sided fold with text on front and back 2 sheets of paper (so you’ll
have two separate zines)
2. Choose a major theme from Frankenstein that you would like to interpret and
communicate in zine form (you can be as creative with interpretation as you like)
3. Include anything you want: art, photos, poetry, etc. However, you will want to make sure
that you are quoting from the text to help communicate your theme. Be as creative as
possible
4. With your zine, you will submit a short writing statement (no more than 200 words) that
explains your theme and what you learned from this assignment.
5. You will turn in your hardcopy version to me and I will make photocopies, so we can
exchange and share.

Reading and Writing Schedule

Date Reading Writing

10/30 Michael Harris, “Printed Ephemera” n/a
11/1 Veteran Paper Project: n/a
http://www.peacepaperproject.org/index.html Makeademic: papermaking

Xu Lizhi poetry:
https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-
poetry
F’18 ENG 102.10 & 11

11/6 Elizabeth O’Brien, “Zines: A Personal History” Journal Entry #1 What are
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Ch. 19 some regular features of the
broadsides? What were
broadsides used for?

What theme will you be writing

on for your zine?
11/8 Makeademic Day: Zine Folds
11/13 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, CH. 20 & 21 Journal Entry #1 What are
Broadsides: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ some regular features of the
broadsides? What were
broadsides used for?

What theme will you be writing

on for your zine?
11/15 N/A Makeademic Day: Broadsides Journal Entry #2: Choose a
moment from Frankenstein and
write a paragraph about how you
would translate that into a
broadside
11/20 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Ch. 22 Journal Entry #3:
Chapbooks: https://digital.library.mcgill.ca/chap Choose a category of chapbooks
books/ and skim through them. Write
about what you looked at and
what common features they all
share.

What type of fold will you be

doing for your zine?
11/27 N/A Makeademic Day: Chapbook with
pamphlet stitch
11/29 N/A Zine workshop