Public History Output: Sign of the (End) Times Zine

This is a short zine which aims to connect with students interested in the current climate crisis.
The first double page spread is introductory and establishes how monstrous births were understood. The second investigates the political dimensions through the Monk Calf and Papal Ass in the reformation. The final spread indicates accelerating crisis and increase in accounts of monstrous births in the sixteenth century.
I have drawn all the illustrations for it, to best draw attention to how the features of monstrous births were used as symbols of crisis in Early Modern Europe, and to indicate that such symbols could be reappropriated today. The front cover is based on the cover of Lycosthenes’ Wonder Book (Prodigiorum,1557). Details in the borders, for example in the second double page spread, are accompanied by small annotations warning against environmentally damaging actions. I connect monstrous births to evolutionary ‘shape shifting’ observed in animals due to climate change. The vibrant colours and extremity in the monsters is exaggerated in the hopes of inspiring radical creativity in an audience of activist students. It serves to keep them engaged and interested, and to contextualise their current feeling of doom in past millenarism.