The committee for the 2024 Joan Pavelich CASDW/ACR Annual Award for the Best Dissertation in Writing and Discourse Studies is delighted to present this award to Dr. Brittany Amell. Dr. Amell’s doctoral thesis—titled “Not all who want to, can—not all who can, will: Extending notions of unconventional doctoral dissertations”—presents a significant contribution to conversations in rhetorical genre theory, applied linguistics, and the study of disciplinary discourse.

In this complex project, Dr. Amell explores the diverse experiences and discursive choices of an international set of doctoral students and their unconventional dissertations. Dr. Amell’s work is firmly rooted in and thoroughly informed by current writing and discourse studies scholarship. With clarity and care, her insights both extend and challenge current approaches as she applies textography as a method, conducts interviews, collects questionnaire responses, and analyzes a significant and diverse corpus of dissertations. This research, rich in contextual detail, allows us to see how shifts in disciplinary setting as well as newly motivating values can turn what might otherwise appear to be conventional into an unconventional project as well as how the multiple negotiations that doctoral students need to engage in continue to constrain formal experimentation. Underlying Dr. Amell’s genre-theoretical analysis is a significant concern for both making doctoral scholarship more publicly accessible and creating more equitable conditions to better support marginalized scholars. This work questions the types of writing that are considered to belong in the university and challenges the status quo of which type of work gets legitimized. Throughout this dissertation, Dr. Amell is exceptionally adept at reflecting on and narrating her research process, describing the challenges of definition she encountered, and attending to the positions and intentions of her research participants. The committee strongly encourages the pursuit of further forms and versions of publication of this thorough and insightful work.

The committee chair, Dr. Katja Thieme, wishes to thank the committee members for their careful work: Nazih El-Bezre, Alys Avalos-Rivera, and Leah Burns. Finally, a wide call to the audience. Please keep this prize on your mind as you encounter doctoral students in any Canadian university or Canadian students studying outside Canada who are completing a dissertation in writing and discourse studies and may be finishing in the upcoming year. Please nominate them next year or encourage them to nominate themselves.”