Bill WolffPopular Music, Protest, Social Justice, Spring 2020Riot Grrrl

1. Deconstruct this cover in terms of how it visually represents the goals, practices, and beliefs of the Riot Grrrl movement, as discussed by Darms, Fateman, and in the zines themselves. Try to locate up to 5 representations.

2. Writing about the civil rights movement, Sanger suggests “that the songs of the civil rights movement were examples of purposeful communication that enabled civil rights activists to set forth a definition of themselves and their undertaking that gave impetus to movement activities. Both the act of singing and the lyrics sung contributed to a positive definition of the activists as capable of improving the conditions of African Americans in the United States” (p. 3, in Sanger part 1).

I’d like you to consider how the zines and zine-making contributed a “purposeful communication” for women of the 90s punk scene and what the zines as a communication practice enable the women to do. Try to locate 4 examples of “purposeful communication” and paste into the document zine pages that illustrate your point. (You might look to the Sanger readings for examples of how the songs enabled people during the civil rights movement and consider if we see them in the zines, as well.)