The Annual Conference of the Canadian Association
for the Study of Discourse and Writing

Rhetoric, Writing, and Discourse Today
May 26-28, 2026
Saint Jerome’s University (SJU)
Waterloo, ON

The Canadian Association for Studies in Discourse and Writing/Association canadienne de rédactologie (CASDW-ACR) 2026 conference will take place at St. Jerome’s University (SJU), a liberal arts institution federated with the University of Waterloo. We enthusiastically invite proposals in English or in French for presentations, symposia, or workshops for CASDW-ACR’s 2026 conference.

We invite proposals engaging diverse topics related to writing studies and discourse studies, and other fields that are relevant to the study and teaching of discourse and writing. While our 2026 conference theme—Rhetoric, Writing, and Discourse Today—emphasizes the urgency of the manifold current moment, we also warmly welcome presentations on historical topics. CASDW-ACR members have wide-ranging interests, from writing theory to AI-responsive lesson plans, from critical discourse analysis to creative writing pedagogy, from discourse and genre histories to social media analyses, from classical rhetoric to genre theory, from multilingual learners and multimodal composition to institutional structures that influence how writing is practiced, taught, and learned.

Our 2026 conference will overlap with the annual conference of RhetCanada (formerly the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric), which is being collaboratively organized to run at SJU from 28-30 May 2026.

We anticipate that the collaboration will make for a vibrant 2026 conference! Organizers are planning a sequence of shared panels on our conference theme. Registered participants in our conference will be welcome to attend all RhetCanada sessions, and vice versa. Participants are welcome to submit proposals to both associations; please ensure that the proposals are for distinct presentations, to avoid duplication across the program.

Learn more in the Call for Papers.