“The Necessity of Genre Disruption in Organizing an Advocacy Space for and by Graduate Students”

by Ashanka Kumari, Sweta Baniya, and Kyle Larson | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

Part 3: Conclusions about Advocacy Space: Escalation

nextGEN is an evolving advocacy space. Traditional academic genres alone are insufficient in building praxis necessary for responding to institutionalized inequities. Including social movement genres into the disciplinary assemblage of possibilities, however, affords opportunities to quickly act and campaign in kairotic response to community and disciplinary needs. nextGEN builds and disrupts traditional academic genres to achieve community uplift for and with graduate students. We originating moderators see this space as demonstrating and escalating disciplinary re-visions necessary for actualizing community, equity, empowerment, and justice. In every way, our space fosters networked partnerships among graduate students while supporting our rights and welfare. And, we hope nextGEN will continue to do so.