The Self-formation of Categorial Entrepreneurs in Zine Media (D03 (ehem. A06))

• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442261292

This project examines contemporary zine media as laboratories for self-designed identity projects. Zines are non-commercial DIY micro publications whose authors actively intervene in processes of social differentiation. The project aims to provide an analytical description of such bottom-up processes as a form of ephemeral, private PR work. Based on the autobiographical genre of the perzine (personal zine) and the relational impetus of the fanzine, the project investigates how narrative and rhetorical strategies are used to produce various intensities of membership, and how authors typify themselves as exemplary specimens of specific (new) categories.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1482: Studies in Human Differentiation
• Applicant Institution: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Oliver Scheiding