Next-Gen Perspectives on Leadership amplifies voices that have too often been excluded from traditional accounts of academic leadership. Centering the voices of early-career PhDs in writing studies and related fields, this book offers essential and practical leadership strategies at a pivotal moment in higher education shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of new majority students, and the growing influence of authoritarian politics.

Next-gen faculty are leading now. Through coalition-building, care work, and equity-driven initiatives, they are transforming institutions from the ground up. From labor organizing and culturally responsive curriculum design to the care-work of academic parents and the leadership of writing program administrators, the contributors in this collection model the type of coalitional leadership needed in our institutions. Structured around intergenerational dialogues, the book brings together early-career scholars with mid-career leaders—Jennifer Sano-Franchini, Christina Cedillo, and Staci Perryman-Clark—who offer sharp, reflective responses to each section, and culminates in a powerful closing essay by Carmen Kynard. These voices trace a lineage of resistance and renewal, showing how the leadership strategies of today’s emerging scholars echo and evolve the activist traditions that have long shaped writing studies. Next-gen leaders are moving beyond individualistic models of success and embracing collective, justice-oriented leadership practices. This collection invites scholars to study and teach forms of leadership that help faculty and students step into the challenging opportunities they face.

For graduate students and early-career faculty, this book offers a model of leadership that creates meaningful change outside designated leadership roles or institutional metrics. For mid-career and senior faculty, it provides a framework for recognizing and supporting the ground-level leadership already happening in their contexts. This collection is for anyone committed to leading more inclusive and sustainable academic communities and encourages faculty across generations to reimagine how to mentor, collaborate, and lead in ways that reflect the values of equity, care, and coalition.
 
Contributors: Felicita Arzu-Carmichael, Amerdeep Bajwa, Christina Cedillo, Alexandra Chapa, Anicca Cox, Tom Do, Mena Hannakachl, Alice Hays, Charisse Iglesias, Brad Jacobson, Carmen Kynard, Adele Leon, Shaylyn Marks, Sean Moxley-Kelly, Abigail Oakley, Staci Perryman-Clark, Ana Milena Ribero, Jennifer Sano-Franchini
 

Charles McMartin is assistant professor of English at Florida State University, where he teaches and researches student activism, community writing, and coalitional leadership in higher education.
 
Eric A. House is associate professor of critical composition and writing studies at New Mexico State University. His research examines how Black rhetoric remixes perceptions of writing and intervenes in the politics of representation and places Black rhetoric and writing in conversation with scholarship in writing studies, rhetoric, literacy studies, linguistics, and cultural studies.
 
Sonia C. Arellano is an independent scholar, technical writer, and director of the Migrant Quilt Project. Her work has been recognized with the 2021 Biennial Kathleen Ethel Welch Outstanding Article Award, the 2022 CCCC Richard Braddock Award, and the 2022 Theresa J. Enos Anniversary Award.
 
Thomas Miller is professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, where he served as WPA, graduate director, and vice provost for faculty affairs. He received awards for his diversity leadership, teaching, mentoring, advocacy for shared governance, and research and is a recipient of the Mina Shaughnessy Award for his book The Formation of College English (1997).