"My Zine Life is My Private Life": Reframing Authority Control from Detective Work to an Ethic of Care

The essence of identity management is authoritatively correlating people with the works they create—but what happens when people don’t want to be paired with their work? Contemporary artists and authors who create controversial artwork and literature have concerns around controlling their identity which may change over time and require thoughtful policies which give them as much autonomy as possible. The authors share our experience with zines, artists' books, and protest art, outlining the unique privacy concerns of creators of this type of work, with special consideration to the maintenance of authority files by large academic institutions and government agencies. We conclude by recommending potential infrastructure solutions for authority data structures to address privacy issues by taking cues from archival practice as well as arguing for the need for clarity around who has control over data in order to ensure creators have the right to determine when, how, and if they are identified with a particular work.

The politics of the street: Street art, public writing and the history of political contest in Chile

This commentary focuses on the politics of public space in democracy and dictatorship. It delves into what Peter Winn calls the revolution ‘from below’ from the perspective of urban conflict, suggesting a political history that attends to urban and visual culture as a crucial arena of political practice. It suggests that the often-conflictive battle over public spaces was, and continues to be, a mechanism by which an unprecedented range of citizens entered into an ongoing debate over the boundaries of citizenship, practice, politics and that this practice was adapted, transformed and reimagined over the last five decades. The struggle over streets and walls continues to be central to Chilean political history, and urban space remains a field of ongoing contest and debate: the estallido of social unrest in contemporary Chile connected a new generation of activists to this longer history of creative politics of protest and protest art and gave them the opportunity to articulate new forms of intersectional political thought in public space, even in the face of state-sponsored violence. Studying these forms of unrest reveals that theirs is an incisive, intersectional critique of the limits of the ‘transition to democracy’, of neoliberal democracies and of the legacies of dictatorship.

Designing Publicly Engaged First-Year Research Projects: Protest Art and Social Change

This research assignment invites students in a first-year writing preparation course to explore topics of social justice through protest art. The course is taught at a small, private liberal arts college in a course for “emerging writers.” I have taught this assignment at a predominantly White institution (PWI), in a course where the majority of students are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Students choose a work of protest art from the campus library special collections, frame the social justice issue it addresses in a local context using local sources, and then write an essay that puts that research in conversation with their own story. Finally, linking public history to civic engagement, students create their own protest art as a community call to action. The multimodal, local, and personal nature of this writing assignment creates opportunities for students to see the connections between their emerging identities as writers and civic actors. This assignment can create space for students to use their multilingual identities to speak back to the structural inequality within our institution, developing confidence in their own voices to call for meaningful change.

Social Strategies Used by the Kipsigis Women to Contest Patriarchal Structures as Highlighted in the Songs of Diana Chemutai Musila and Babra Chepkoech

Many women in Kenya, and in particular those in the Kipsigis community, are still faced with many challenges due to the patriarchal nature of their society, although the new Kenya constitution passed in 2010 provides a framework for attaining gender equality. Among the many methods of protest, art has been used in many societies as an instrument for contesting social ills including patriarchy. This has also been true to the Kipsigis community. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the use of selected popular Kipsigis songs of Diana Chemutai Musila (Chelele) and Babra Chepkoech to contest patriarchy. Specifically, the study analysed the aspects of patriarchal oppression of the Kipsigis women as depicted in the selected Kipsigis songs; explored ways used by the Kipsigis women to contest patriarchy as highlighted in the selected Kipsigis songs and examined the literary devices used by the selected singers to expose patriarchal oppression in the selected Kipsigis songs. The target population were ten songs from the two Kipsigis artists. These artists and their songs were chosen purposively. The study was guided by American feminist literary critic and writer Elaine Showalter’s feminist ideas to explore how the artists capture the experiences of the Kipsigis women in their songs. Specifically, the study used theory to describe the existing tendencies of patriarchy in the Kipsigis society as depicted in the community’s Kipsigis songs. The data was analysed thematically and interpreted in line with the research objectives, the reviewed literature and the theoretical framework adopted for the study. The research established that popular songs, in general, are used not only for entertainment but also to address issues of great concern for society such as fighting for equity among spouses in the Kipsigis community. The study saw that there was/is need for composers to develop music that portrays positive roles of members of both genders, which could lead to the realization of an equiponderant society where men and women coexist peacefully.