Genre and activism: School, social movements, and genres as discourse conduits

This article examines the literacy practices of three school-based student activist groups: a Gay-Straight Alliance, a high school chapter of Amnesty International, and a human rights club unaffiliated with Amnesty. Specifically, this article investigates how members of the different groups advanced their projects by repurposing school genres such as hallway bulletin boards and office memos. By articulating movement messages in school genres, it is argued, activists tightened their schools’ connections to social movements and circulated movement discourses through school space. After findings on each group are presented, the concept “genre as discourse conduit” is induced from the data and is used to reevaluate the nuances and implications of students’ efforts to articulate movement discourses in school genres. Equipped with this new concept, researchers may better analyze activist groups’ efforts to perform movement work in schools.