The West Coast Zines Collection consists of Fan Magazines and Zines dating from 1985 to the present. Topics include feminism, gender, sexuality, and women's issues which generally cross race, class, and geographic boundaries. A few examples of girl print zines collected in the SDSU Special Collections Archive include Glue Magazine, El Sueno de Venus, Oya, Hip Mama, and Wive's Tales. Zines in the collection are arranged alphabetically by title. Author, date and volume, place of publication, and category (i.e. music, technology, feminism, etc) are also included in each zine description.

Zines are informal, personal mini-magazines on virtually any topic, written, published, and distributed by their creators. The incredible breadth of zines make it difficult to classify them but several areas of focus consistently emerge such as the political, personal, network, scene, grrrl/girl, art, fringe culture, sex, religious, health, vocational, travel, and literary zine, as well as comix, and many, many more. Throughout their history, a unique and important publishing network has been developed by the dedication of both zine creators and their readers. A large and complex subculture revolves around the distribution of this literature where "zinesters" have created a self-supported underground rich with resourcefulness, networking, and interaction. While types of zines and their content are as unique as the individuals who create them, all zines present a social, if not political, challenge. Backed by a hardboiled Do-It-Yourself ethic, zines become a form of cultural rebellion where individuals take initiative, community develops, and a movement is born.

25.00 linear ft

The copyright interests in these materials have not been transferred to San Diego State University. Copyright resides with the creators of materials contained in the collection or their heirs. The nature of historical archival and manuscript collections is such that copyright status may be difficult or even impossible to determine.  Requests for permission to publish must be submitted to the Head of Special Collections, San Diego State University, Library and Information Access. When granted, permission is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical item and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder(s), which must also be obtained in order to publish. Materials from our collections are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials.