The Joan Pavelich CASDW Annual Award for the Best Dissertation in Writing and Discourse Studies recognizes the most outstanding PhD dissertation in Writing Studies, Discourse Studies, Rhetoric, or a cognate field for the preceding year. The award will be given to a student in a Canadian university or to a Canadian student studying outside Canada.  To be eligible, dissertations must have been defended between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2016. An announcement of the winning dissertation will be made at the CASDW Annual General Meeting.

The award includes a prize of $100 and a one-year free CASDW membership for the following year.

The deadline for nominations is April 30, 2017. Self-nominations are accepted. The assessment criteria for the award are the following: (1) the overall quality of the writing and thinking; (2) the significance of the question(s) addressed in the research; (3) the importance of the new knowledge presented in the thesis; and (3) and methodological rigour and/or innovation.

Applicants/nominators should send the following items to each member of the selection committee listed below: a pdf file containing the dissertation (or a link to an online repository), a CV, and a cover sheet with the applicant’s full name, citizenship, institution and degree program, and the contact information for their primary supervisor.

Doreen Starke-Meyerring doreen.starke-meyerring@mcgill.ca

Jay Dolmage dolmage@uwaterloo.ca

Rachael Cayley rachael.cayley@utoronto.ca

Patty A. Kelly patty.kelly@ubc.ca

 

Early-bird registration rates for Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences 2017 will end on March 31!

To register now, click here.

To renew or sign up for membership in CASDW, click here.

 

The Ninth Annual Conference of
the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing (CASDW / ACR)

The Presence of Writing: Making a Place for the Study of Writing and Discourse

Saturday, May 27 to Monday, May 29, 2017

Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Keynote: Professor Rebecca Moore Howard, “Teaching Rhetorical Ethics in a Post-Truth Economy”

Closing plenary: Professor Catherine Schryer, Ryerson University

For more information on the CASDW conference, click here.

 

University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference

Cultivating Curiosity in Teaching and Learning

Waterloo, Ontario

April 27, 2017

Learn more on the conference website.

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University of Toronto Teaching and Learning Symposium

Intersections: Where Instructional Design Meets Learning Science

Toronto, Ontario

May 1, 2017

Learn more on the conference website.

 

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Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Educations Conference

Gateways in Higher Education: Cultures, Transitions, Transformations

Halifax, Nova Scotia

June 20—23

Learn more on the conference website.

Special Issue of WLN: Transfer of Learning in the Writing Center

Guest Editors: Dana Lynn Driscoll (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) and Bonnie Devet (College of Charleston)

A vital topic in higher education is transfer of learning, or what is generally known as students’ ability to adapt, apply, or remix prior knowledge and skills in new contexts, including educational, civic, personal, and professional.  As recent writing center scholarship attests, transfer of learning is of key importance to the work we do in writing centers, both with our work with clients but also with our tutors themselves.

For this special issue of the WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, we encourage contributors to consider, as starting points, some of the following questions related to transfer and centers:

• How might transfer be defined and considered in a writing center context?
• How does transfer help characterize the development of consultants, both novice and expert?
• How do consultants transfer knowledge between settings?
• What strategies can consultants use to support and encourage clients’ transfer of prior knowledge and skills during sessions?
• How do clients use the writing center to transfer writing knowledge between courses?
• What role do dispositions play in transfer in a writing center context?
• What can writing center directors do to help prepare tutors to better support transfer?
• How can transfer of learning be a primary mission for writing centers?

We welcome proposals for articles that are no longer than 3,000 words including Works Cited (fewer if there are figures and/or tables], written in MLA format, and a Tutor’s Column that is no longer than 1,500 words in MLA format including Works Cited. We encourage articles that are RAD-research oriented, practical, or theoretical to consider the above and other questions surrounding transfer.

Proposals of 500 words will be accepted until May 1, 2017. Invitations to submit full articles will be issued by June 1, 2017. Invited authors submit drafts Sept. 1, 2017. Revised manuscripts will be due by Jan. 15, 2018. Send proposals here.

Journal of Second Language Writing is accepting proposals for a 2019 special topic issue from interested guest editors. We seek proposals that address a theme that will be of interest and relevance to the journal’s international readership of L2 writing scholars. We are especially interested in special issue themes that will highlight work in underrepresented contexts and areas of inquiry in second language writing. Recent special issues have addressed the following topics:

• Thesis and dissertation writing in a second language (in progress)
• L2 writing in computer-mediated contexts (in progress)
• Complexity in L2 writing
• Corpus assessment in L2 writing
• Exploring L2 writing-SLA interfaces
• Textual appropriation and source use in L2 writing
• Adolescent L2 writing in U.S. contexts
• The future of genre in second language writing: A North American perspective
• Writing in foreign language contexts: Research insights

Articles to be included in the issue may be invited by the guest editors, or the guest editors may put out an open call for papers for the issue.

Proposal Content: Proposals should include: (a) a general description of the issue and its potential contribution to the field; (b) relevance and important features of the issue; (c) an outline of the proposed authors and content (with abstracts), if the pieces are to be invited; (e) a call for proposals/abstracts, if there will be an open call for submissions; (f) name(s) and qualifications of the guest editor(s), including relevant editing experience; and (g) a proposed timeline.

Deadline: Email proposals in a single PDF file by June 1, 2017. Proposals will be reviewed initially by the journal’s editors and then may be passed on to the editorial board for a second-stage review. The issue will appear in the second half of 2019.

Please contact JSLW editors Icy Lee and Guillaume Gentil with any questions.