The 2016 Joan Pavelich CASDW Annual Award for the Best Dissertation in Writing and Discourse Studies was awarded to Joel Heng Hartse, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, SFU. This award is given annually for a dissertation completed in the previous calendar year. Joel won this award for his dissertation, Acceptability and Authority in Chinese and Non-Chinese English Language Teachers’ Judgments of Language Use in English Writing by Chinese University Students (UBC, Language and Literacy Education, 2015). The committee praised Joel’s work for its clarity, thoroughness, and relevance. In particular, they focused on the value of his shift away from error-based assessment and towards the contextual assessment of acceptability in written language.

Congratulations, Joel!

Dear All,

Please see the attachment for the final program of CASDW 2016 Conference. There are a couple of adjustments compared with the previous version.

2016 CASDW Program FINAL

The call for nominations for the editorship of the Canadian Journal for the Study of Discourse and Writing is pasted below and also attached as a Word document here.

This is a call for nominations or volunteers for the editorial team of the Canadian Journal for the Study of Discourse and Writing. The official job description is as follows:

The publication editor(s) have the following responsibilities

• Prepare the contents of, and appropriately disseminate, Association publications in either print or electronic form
• Appoint an assistant editor representing the official language other than that of the editor
• Appoint an editorial board and a peer review board

This rudimentary description, of course, hides much of the real work. Some of this, such as preparing files with appropriate metadata so that they are searchable, is mechanical and could be delegated to technical assistants if available. Probably the biggest challenge, however, lies in coaxing the community to submit good manuscripts. Potential authors will need to be confidant that if their manuscripts are accepted, they will be published within a reasonable time frame. This, in turn, requires building the journal’s reputation.

Potential editors are encouraged to consult with the current editor in chief, Jaclyn Rae <jackie.rea@ubc.ca> and her editorial team to discuss what would be involved in handing off the journal and maintaining it.

We hope to be able to vote in a new team at the conference in May, so it would be wonderful to have nominations by the end of March. Anyone interested should canvass colleagues at his or her institution to see whether there is broad support for organizing an editorial team. Please contact Doug Brent <dabrent@ucalgary.ca> with questions or nominations.

CASDW invites nominations for its Annual Research Award—an award given to the author(s) of the best journal article or book chapter published by a 2015 CASDW member during the 2015 calendar year. Co-authored articles or chapters will be eligible as long as one of the authors was a CASDW member during the year of the award.  The deadline for nominations is March 15, 2016. The winner of the award will be announced at the 2016 CASDW conference at the University of Calgary.

The selection criteria are as follows:

•    Significance and contribution to the field.
•    Depth of the research.
•    General quality of the writing, including its comprehensibility.
•    Originality.

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

Please note: Ideally, e-mail nominations will include an attached pdf of the journal article or book chapter, as well as a complete reference.

Nominations should be sent in an e-mail addressed to Graham Smart (gsmart@connect.carleton.ca) and copied to the three other members of the selection committee: Natasha Artemeva (natasha_artemeva@carleton.ca), Margie Clow Bohan (C.Bohan@Dal.ca), and Stephanie White (stephanie.white@uwaterloo.ca).

Authors are invited to nominate their own publications as well as those of other CASDW members.

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, 2015, and December 31, 2015. 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 1, 2016. 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.

Jay Dolmage dolmage@uwaterloo.ca

Rachael Cayley rachael.cayley@utoronto.ca

Andrea Williams al.williams@utoronto.ca

Sheila Hannon smehanno@uwaterloo.ca

Duncan Koerber dkoerber@ryerson.ca