Rebecca Trawick Denise Johnson - Chaffey College

SUMMARY OF GUEST SPEAKER PRESENTATION
The Professional Development Program recognizes the benefit of ensuring that faculty and staff share with one another
information gained as a result of a conference or workshop; therefore, please provide a summary of your event that
addresses the questions below. Please use this document and submit it via email to Angie Horton, Professional
Development, within three calendar weeks of your event. Professional Development intends to share this information with
the campus in an electronic and/or printed format.
Please feel free to print and use this blank document during your event to collect thoughts for your summary.
Name: Rebecca Trawick, Denise Johnson
Presentation Title and Presenter’s Name:
Dr. Brenda Helmbrecht, Assistant Professor, Director of the Writing Program, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo;
Girl Zines-A-Go-Go (Kimmie Schwenk and Margarat Nee)
Presentation Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007
What are/were your expectations of this presentation?
Both presenters were part of the Girly Zine Festival (Boys Can Come, Too!) held in conjunction with the exhibition, Girly Show:
Pin-Ups, Zines & the So-Called Third Wave.
Dr. Helmbrecht considered the world of feminist zines and the irreverence, anger, wit and sarcasm that saturates them in
her talk, There Is No ‘I’ in Grrrrl: The Bustin’ and Bitchin’ Rhetoric of Third-Wave Zines. The discussion focused on two
wide release publications found on mainstream bookstore shelves and distributed through subscription, Bitch and Bust, and
examined how these third wave titles are transforming debates surrounding feminism and gender-sexuality issues. She
compared and contrasted these contemporary feminist forums, concluding that both approaches had their benefits and
faults but provided invigorating critiques that were quite indispensable.
Girl Zines-A-Go-Go is an all-women group that has been facilitating workshops in community venues and college campuses
in Southern California since 2002. GZAGG conducted a lively and empowering workshop, in which participants
collectively created their own zine.
Dr. Helmbrecht’s discussion and the GZAGG workshop will encourage and facilitate class visits to the Girly Show exhibition.
Zine festival participants will be taught how to construct a zine and will be encouraged to embrace, discover and examine
feminist issues through the zine making experience. Participants
The methods, aesthetics and tactics employed in the creation of zines can be shared with students in the classroom directly,
promoting innovative assignments and class discussions. Instructors may also find the feminist reading room a valuable
resource for students to conduct personal, scholarly or assignment related research regarding contemporary feminisms.
What were the results of the presentation you attended?
Participants of the Zine Festival were introduced to zines through an analysis of two mainstream publications, Bitch and
Bust. Attendees were also offered a hands-on opportunity to make their own zines and were introduced to will be
introduced to key issues in contemporary feminism including the question of the third wave and it’s contested definition, the
power of self-publishing, the influence of zines, the history of the pin-up and a reconsideration of semiotic understanding of
the pin-up, among other topics.
Faculty members attending the event were encouraged to utilize zine strategies in the classroom, as an alternative tool for
discussing the history of feminism and gender issues. For those attendees that were staff or faculty, both events presented
another way to critically view the exhibition and provided hands-on experience in zine-making.
How do you intend to incorporate the information or experience into your instruction and service to students?
The discussions of zines provided by the Girl Zines-A-Go-Go group, Dr. Brenda Helmbrecht, the zine hands-on workshop
and the faculty-led tours will provide fellow faculty with a wide assortment of topics and considerations that are relevant
to many disciplines that we hope will generate conversation and extended discourse within the classroom setting. Some
pragmatic examples:
• Gender studies instructors may find interesting avenues of inquiry regarding the social and cultural construction of
gender
• Correctional Science faculty may find a provocative critique on the way women are pathologized and criminalized

• Economics instructors may find the exhibition as a great way to spark conversation on financial inequities between
the sexes
• Political science instructors may find the show to be an interesting entrance into the political contributions of women,
and prohibition thereof, as well as the ramifications of the ERA (if it is ever ratified)
• Art instructors may find the show to be an inspiration for their students to explore new media and styles, and to
utilize their work to voice political and personal concerns
• Creative writing instructors may find very practical applications to their student’s writing and publication of their
own works. The exhibition serves as a resource for material for many English courses and Creative Writing and
Poetry can specifically exploit the focus on zines and self-publishing tactics in the classroom
• Humanities can benefit from the exhibition and related activities in their interdisciplinary approach to the study of
culture and history (Arts and Ideas) and Museum and Gallery Field Study can use the exhibition as an on-campus
resource for their discussions
• Journalism students can use the exhibition as a resource for news writing projects; the viewers/audience of the
exhibition may also be critical to their work
• Philosophy faculty may find the exhibition relates to discussions of ethics, political and personal values, critical
thinking and issues of the self
• Photography faculty will find a great deal of photography represented in the exhibition that can be used to
directly co-relate to classroom lectures. Further, all work in the exhibition relate to discussions of contemporary art
and critical issues
• Psychology can use the exhibition as a resource when discussing issues related to perception
• Sociology will find the exhibition useful in discussions related to social inequality, conditions affecting social change,
popular culture/culture politics, gender issues, marriage and family politics
• Cinema may find the films we’re screening in the Reading Room of interest from a cinematic studies perspective;
the exhibition features three artists showing artists films in Girly Show which can support dialogue in survey,
production and writing coursework
• Communication Studies can use the exhibition as a source for speech-writing assignments
• History faculty can use the exhibition as a resource for HIST-25, Women in United States History in discussions
about the history of feminism as it relates to their discussions
Would you recommend this presenter to speak again in the future? Why or why not?
Yes, if and when the research was relevant to an exhibition or curriculum. The topics are specific in the case of Dr.
Helmbrecht’s presentation, but the GZAGG women could be invited in the future in relation to art, English or other course
work. Both events were highly accessible and interesting and we’d recommend both.
Additional Comments
Thank you for your support of these events. The overall Festival had over 150 visitors to Chaffey College and the Wignall
Museum. We don’t have data on how many were faculty members, but we hope faculty utilized this unique event to obtain
flex credit and to investigate alternative tools for the classroom.