The Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing awards two major prizes each year. (Full terms of reference for both awards can be found here.)
- The Annual Best Paper Award
- The Joan Pavelich Award for the Best Dissertation in Writing Studies (formerly Annual Best Dissertation Award)
In recognition of Joan Pavelich, Professor Emeritus at UBC, who passed away May 11, 2015, the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing (CASDW) recently voted to change the name of its annual best dissertation award to The Joan Pavelich Award for the Best Dissertation in Writing Studies, effective in the 2015 award year.
The renaming of the award recognizes the work that Joan did in 1981-82 in founding the Canadian Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (CATTW), the precursor organization to CASDW. As Joan recounts in a 1994 article in Technostyle, she had to overcome a number of obstacles—including lack of funding and institutional support—to get the association up and writing. Through Joan’s tireless efforts, CATTW emerged as a new bilingual association, with its own refereed journal, Technostyle, and an annual conference held in association with the Learneds conference, now the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Joan was the founding editor of Technostyle and served as president of CATTW until 1985. In 2008, CATTW became CASDW, with a new broader focus on advancing the study of discourse and the teaching of writing in academic and non-academic settings.
Joan’s obituary can be found here
Joan’s entertaining account of the founding of CATTW can be found here.
