Book Details

Intimate Ephemera

Reading Young Lives in Australian Zine Culture

Academic Monograph

Anna Poletti

An analysis of narrative strategies and themes in Australian perzines (personal zines) that looks at the diversity of zine culture.

Opinion

‘Intimate Ephemera is a lovely description of the humble zine and this scholarly contribution
claims to be the "first major study of autobiographical writing produced and consumed in a youth subculture".’
The Age 19/7/08

Click link for full review: www.mup.com.au

‘In the midst of the relentless attention given to the association of youth and new media, it is salutary to be reminded that such low-tech endeavours [as zines] still exist.’
Journal of Australian Studies, Vol.33, No.1

Click link for full review: www.mup.com.au

About this Title

Intimate Ephemera is the first major study of autobiographical writing produced and consumed in a youth subculture. Investigating the uses of the zine form for life writing, it examines the recurrent themes in texts circulating in Australian zine culture, including depression, consumerism, popular culture and political identity.

Intimate Ephemera also examines zine culture as a unique community of life writing and reading, where handmade texts circulate in an economy of gifting and exchange utilising the postal system. The book analyses the material diversity of zines as handmade objects, examining the use of the photocopier and craft techniques in these limited edition publications, bringing a focus to the role of the text-object in communicating personal experience.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1: Rethinking Resistance, Authenticity and Autobiography
2: Zines Making Zinesters
3: Narrating and (re)Figuring the Bedroom
4: Consuming Selves
5: Narratives of Depression
6: Materialising Intimacy: Reading the Perzine as Autobiographical Object
Conclusion

About the Author

Anna Poletti has been involved in do-it-yourself cultural projects since the late 1990s, including managing the National Young Writer's Festival (2000) and coordinating the This Is Not Art group of festivals (2003) in Newcastle, NSW. She currently lectures in Communications and Writing at Monash University.

Book Preview

978-0-522-85565-4