You can see and download the CASDW23 Program now! It’s available on the CASDW 2023 webpage.

We’re looking forward to (re) connecting at York University later this month.

Calling all dissertation survivors! The deadline for the CASDW/ACR Awards for Best Dissertations is Monday, April 17, 2023. This year, we will be awarding the Best Dissertations for 2020, 2021, and 2022.

The Joan Pavelich CASDW/ACR Annual Award for the Best Dissertation in Writing and Discourse Studies recognizes an outstanding PhD dissertation in Writing Studies, Discourse Studies, Rhetoric, or a cognate field. The awards will be given to students in a Canadian university or to a Canadian student studying outside Canada.

To be eligible, dissertations must have been defended between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2022. Each year’s dissertations (2020, 2021, and 2022) will be judged and awarded separately. An announcement of the winning dissertations will be made at the CASDW/ACR Annual Conference, with an eye toward additional exciting ways to honour winners and disseminate their work. Nominees do not need to be CASDW/ACR members, and self-nominations are accepted.

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

The deadline for nominations is Monday, April 17, 2023. The assessment criteria for the award are as follows:

• (1) Builds on or extends previous scholarship relevant to discourse and writing studies work, and/or addresses a notable gap in the scholarship, and/or re-conceives discourse and writing students work through divergent thinking and/or diverse experiences;
• (2) the significance of the question(s) addressed in the research;
• (3) the importance of the new knowledge presented in the thesis; and
• (4) meaningful and relevant methodology 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 contact information for their primary supervisor.

Sara Humphreys (shumphreys@uvic.ca)

Diana Wegner (wegnerd@telus.net)

Britt Amell (BrittanyAmell@cmail.carleton.ca)

Dana Landry (Dana.Landry@ufv.ca)

Nominations are being accepted for the 2022 Doreen Starke-Meyerring Annual Award for the best article or chapter in writing and discourse studies. This award celebrates the outstanding scholarship being produced within the Canadian writing and discourse studies community.

The Doreen Starke-Meyerring Annual Award recognizes the best journal article or book chapter published during the calendar year by a CASDW member. Co-authored articles or chapters will be eligible as long as one of the authors is a CASDW member.

In order to be eligible, nominees must have been CASDW members in 2022. In the case of co-authored pieces, at least one member must have been a CASDW member in 2022. The nominated article or chapter must have been published in 2022.

To nominate an article or chapter, please send a PDF of the journal article or book chapter and a complete reference to the selection committee to the selection committee. No other documents are needed!

The deadline for nominations is March 8, 2023. The winner of the award will be announced at the CASDW Annual Conference.  Authors are invited to nominate their own publications as well as those of other CASDW members.

The assessment criteria for the award are as follows:

• the overall quality of the writing and thinking;
• the significance of the question(s) addressed in the research;
• the importance of the new knowledge presented in the article; and
• and methodological rigour and/or innovation.

The award includes a one-year CASDW membership for the following year.

Applicants/nominees should send a PDF of the journal article or book chapter, as well as a complete reference, to the selection committee listed below:

James Corcoran: corcora2@yorku.ca

Sara Doody: sara.doody@uwaterloo.ca

Boba Samuels: boba.samuels@utoronto.ca

We are delighted to share our Call for Proposals for CASDW23!

Our conference will explore the theme of Seeking Connections/Recognizing Divergence: Reckonings and Re-imaginings in Canadian Discourse and Writing Studies Today.

All information is available in the Call for Proposals (English) / Appel de communications (en français).

We welcome abstracts in French or English from those working in Writing and Discourse Studies. Submissions are due January 15, 2023.

The CASDW-ACR 2023 conference will be held Sunday, May 28 to Tuesday, May 30 2023 at York University, in Toronto, Ontario.

We will re-join the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences conference and offer an as-hybrid-as-possible conference in-person and online with live-streaming when available.

In the coming months, watch for information from CASDW-ACR on

• Our call for papers (expected mid-November, with a due date for proposals by mid-January, 2023)
  • Our theme will be in-line with Congress’s focus on social justice. To be announced with the call for papers.
• Early-bird registration will open in January and close in late March.
  • Because we are participating in Congress, registrants will have to pay fees to both Congress and to CASDW/ACR.
  • Our fee structure will reflect the different income brackets occupied by our members, as does Congress’s fee structure.
  • We plan to allow BIPOC students to register in our conference for free.
• Information on childcare options.
  • CASDW/ACR is only able to offer one subsidy of $200 to help cover one registrant’s childcare costs (in person or remote) during the conference. 

Our conference organizing committee for 2023 includes:

• James Corcoran, Local Area Coordinator for our conference at York University
• Tessa Troughton, who spent a day at York on our behalf this September
• Laura Baumvol, who has joined the organizing committee, and
• The CASDW/ACR executive