When faculty in the sciences and health fields assign investigative research papers, students often work with Dawn Stahura, Berry Library research and instructional librarian on their projects. Stahura visits classrooms and meets individually with students, teaching them how to find resources, focus their topic, evaluate sources, and research their papers. Most students in these academic disciplines are familiar with the traditional expectations for a research project; emphasizing objectivity, measurement, and experimentation. After all, sciences, like biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and health, are built upon centuries of rigorous research and accumulated knowledge.
However, Stahura is pioneering an innovative approach to these types of inquiry: creating zines. Biology Professor Lisa Delissio first worked with Stahura in 2019. Together they re-envisioned her project, rather than assigning a traditional research paper. Stahura explained, “We tore it apart and re-imagined what it could look like if students had more control over not only how they talked about their research, but also wouldn’t it be great if they could make big connections and place themselves in the research?” Delissio has been assigning zines with Stahura embedded in her class ever since.
Creating Zines
Stahura first encountered zines while growing up in the rural mid-west. These self-published small booklets date back to the 1830’s and the Anti-Slavery Abolitionists’ pamphlets. The name, zine, is short for magazine; a creative form of expression, shared among communities on topics of interest. Stahura experienced the transformative power of creating zines in an academic setting before and sought more faculty collaborators willing to embrace this new teaching tool at Salem State.
As Stahura explains, zines “allow students to be as creative as they want to be while also upholding the integrity of the research itself.” Students working on zines still choose their topic, research it, and analytically report on it. Yet, by asking students to place themselves in the research, the project expands to allow students to explain their motivation, why they chose the topic, and describe related concrete impacts they may see or experience. The zine format further invites them to creatively convey their findings, methodology, and unique choices made along the way. There are new dimensions revealed in a zine assignment as students take on roles beyond that of a researcher, including publisher, editor, spokesperson, and artist.
Valuing both the scientific method and the positionality of the authors, zines enable students to engage more actively and deeply in their learning through these types of projects. Zines illustrate many of the defining characteristics of AAC&U’s high-impact practices, including time on task, real-world relevance, consistent feedback, focusing on reflection, and substantive interactions with faculty and peers. High-impact practices have been shown to significantly benefit student learning and retention.
Zines also offer a way to shield against the potential for artificial intelligence to infiltrate the research process. When students are asked to locate themselves in the research, explaining their investigative and presentation choices, AI can’t contribute much to the narrative. As an added bulwark against over-dependence on technology, students in Professor Delissio’s zine classes are expected to use plain language when explaining their research project, rather than relying on scientific jargon. Developing such skills in students further strengthens their confidence, knowledge about the subject, and their ability to articulate, persuade and/or advocate for their topic, too.
Educating with Empathy
Through Stahura’s efforts, the use of zines has expanded to disciplines beyond the sciences, such as English, Sociology, Education, Interdisciplinary Studies, First Year Seminars, and even graduate courses. Stahura created the Library’s zine collection six years ago and now she serves as the Zine Librarian. Featuring nearly 300 zines, the collection is housed on the main floor of the Library. Stahura was embedded in eight different courses last semester, shepherding students through the process of creating and presenting their zines. “What’s very beautiful and unique about our collection is that it’s written by students for students,” says Stahura.
Serendipitously, Stahura even discovered a zine giving voice to SSU students from decades earlier. After finding one lone zine stamped with the seal, “Salem State College Alternatives Library” among the book, Stahura collaborated with faculty, students, and librarian colleagues who helped her uncover a collection of zines, books, pamphlets, and magazines from the late 1960s through the early 1990s. The collection of works includes chapbooks and broadsides by Audre Lorde and Nikki Giovanni, books on prison reform, gay liberation, student protests, and the feminist movement as well as the entire print run of Naiad Press, one of the first dedicated to lesbian literature. The collection includes over 1,600 items, some unique, and one-of-a-kind. Once disbursed across the stacks can now be browsed at its new home, The Alternatives Library Collection, on the first floor of the Library directly across from the zine collection. These two student-centered collections bring to the forefront the power of student voices and the ways in which those voices can literally change the library landscape.
Like the, Alternatives Library Collection, the zines live beyond the classroom, contributing discoverable, new resources, while most typical research papers are not read by anyone other than the student and their instructor. Additionally, with student permission, the zines are digitized, joining the University’s Digital Commons, an online searchable repository. The students’ original zines also become part of the physical zine collection.
Stahura describes her approach with zines as fostering “critical creativity.” She recently published a book called, “Educating with Empathy: A Holistic Framework for Teaching the Research Process,” expanding on the approach she’s successfully employed with zines. “We use a different part of our brain when we are doing something creative,” says Stahura. The multi-faceted methodology realized through creating zines revives a metaphorical muscle that may not have been exercised in a while, particularly among students in the sciences and healthcare fields.
One of the foundational lessons that Stahura’s championed is the power of letting those she encounters know that they matter, always. This critical realization was sadly reinforced when she tragically lost her niece to suicide. In her daily interactions, correspondence, and even her email signature, she reminds us to accept and embrace our own value. Stahura even created stickers posted around campus to emphasize this fundamental proposition: You matter. Always.
As her book description asserts, “Our students want and need to feel seen, heard, and treated as fully whole human beings.” Stahura articulates the need to teach “the research process that incorporates storytelling, spirituality, critical creativity, healing work, witnessing, and social justice…to make space for the students in the room.”