Printing Politics: a workshop and roundtable discussion

Please join the Rutgers Initiative for the Book and Scarlet Letterpress for a multi-modal exploration of the relation between print and political action:

Printing Politics 

Thursday, October 23

2:00-5:00pm: poster printing and zine making workshop

5:30-7:00pm: roundtable discussion with artists, art workers, and scholars on the role of print media in their diverse practices.

Murray Hall 303, 510 George St, New Brunswick, NJ

All welcome.  RSVP here for the workshop portion of the event; attending the whole 3 hours is not required, but participants who would like to print posters should plan to spend at least 45 minutes on their projects. No registration is required for the panel discussion.

Co-sponsored by the Rutgers Democracy Lab

About the panelists:

Shiva Addanki is an artist and educator primarily working in drawing, painting, and books. His work deals with divisions of land and labor, and the defiance of the dispossessed. His most recent exhibitions were at A.D. NYC and Mason Gross School of the Arts, where he is currently pursuing an MFA and teaching. He publishes the book series Shadow Comms. He previously taught printmaking at Groundswell Community Mural program in Brooklyn and holds an M.A. from the department of Social & Cultural Analysis at NYU.

Belle Handler is a letterpress printer and multimedia artist whose work and studio practice emerge from her lived experience with disability, and the use of print technologies spanning from traditional letterpress printing to contemporary computer-aided design and CNC machining. As a printmaker and arts educator she reflects the understanding that artmaking, printmaking, and diy-publishing are pivotal resources for disabled communities and individuals. Working as the Studio Coordinator for the Soapbox Community Print Studio in Philadelphia, her practice has continued to expand towards a focus on arts education and community-building through the shared preservation and community use of book arts technologies.

Daylon Orr is the founder of Fugitive Materials. He is an archivist, publisher, and rare bookseller committed to the preservation of radical, lesser-known, and alternative histories, and to the disruption of informational privilege. Fugitive Materials specializes in global material cultures of resistance: the detritus of radical social movements, queer histories, counterculture, pedagogy, urbanism, uprisings, and art. Daylon organizes, catalogs, and places archives, ephemera, and primary-source documents with universities and museums around the world. As a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), he also buys and sells books, periodicals and ephemera and locates rare and out-of-print publications.

Whitney Trettien is an Associate Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities. Her scholarship explores the history of literary technologies across a wide range of periods, with a particular interest in how they shape digital media today. Her first book is Cut/Copy/Paste: Fragments from the History of Bookwork. She is currently working on a second book on the history of digital text. She also runs the digital website Printing in Prisons, which traces how printing presses have been used as means of both exploitation and creative expression within prisons.

Roberto Gonzalez is the Philadelphia Community Education Navigator for the Petey Greene Program, where he supports community-based programming. In 2021, Roberto was accepted to Eastern University’s Prison Education Program. He earned his associate’s degree in liberal arts and graduated in August 2024 as valedictorian of his class with a 4.0 GPA. Released from prison in 2024, he dedicated himself to furthering his education and supporting other incarcerated scholars. He is currently pursuing his bachelor’s degree with a major in Psychology, and a minor in Communications at Eastern University.