PreK–12 Educator Workshop

Teachers of all levels and backgrounds are invited to attend a hands-on art-making workshop. The experience will begin with a guided tour of the Kemper Art Museum’s Teaching Gallery installation Listening to the Art of German Cultures. Sarah Koellner, assistant professor in Comparative Literature and Thought in Arts & Sciences, who organized the installation, will address the complex interplay between national and cultural identity in relation to the works on view.

After the gallery conversation, participants will move to Bixby Hall for a hands-on zine-making session with Aggie Toppins, artist and associate professor in the Sam Fox School. Drawing on ideas and themes from the exhibition, Toppins will guide participants through creative methods and techniques for zines-making, encouraging experimentation, storytelling, and personal response.

Dinner will be provided. Prior experience is not necessary to participate. Space is limited, and registration is required.

About the Facilitator

Aggie Toppins is a graphic designer, researcher, and writer whose work explores where graphics come from, what they do, and how they change over time. She is an associate professor of communication design in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, where she teaches “Zines as Critical Practice,” among other graphic design courses. She is the co-curator, with illustrator Shreyas R. Krishnan, of the TL;DR Zine Archive, which is held at the Dowd Illustration Research Archive (DIRA) in WashU Special Collections. Aggie has exhibited her work in dozens of exhibitions nationwide and has published in several books and field leading journals. Last year, she published her first book, Thinking Through Graphic Design History: Challenging the Canon (Bloomsbury, 2025).

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