March 2008 Business Meeting

Steve Cahir Award

The Steve Cahir (pronounced car) award is an early career award given to a Writing SIG member. It is given in memory of Steve Cahir who was the Department of Education program officer responsible for helping to fund the National Center for the Study of Writing. He died before the Center actually opened. The list of people who were associated with the center is a veritable who’s who of literacy researchers. Although the center no longer exists as an independent entity, the work supported by the center continues to live on through the scholars associated with the Writing and Literacies SIG. The criteria for the award includes excellence on all fronts: including theory, literature review, methods, findings, including importance of the piece and how well it's written. The award is given only if there is a deserving paper. Previous recipients of the award include Melanie Sperling, Peter Smagorinsky (1991), and Mari Haneda (2001).

Anne Whitney (left), Pennsylvania State University, was the recipient of the Steve Cahir Award for early scholarship in the field of writing and literacies. Her work examined how participation in a National Writing Project Summer Institute served as a transformative experience for teachers. Sheridan Blau (right), who served as Dr. Whitney's dissertation advisor, nominated her for the award and introduced Dr. Whitney and her work to the attendees of the Writing and Literacies SIG business meeting.

Featured Speaker: Hilary Janks

Hilary Janks, professor in Applied English Language Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, presented theoretical perspectives on critical literacy and the continued need to draw on the cycle of naming, problematizing, and renaming in our work with literacies. Dr. Janks' research has long been in the area of critical literacy, and she continues to push our thinking in terms of critical literacy as it is practiced. She has numerous publications including the editorship of the Critical Language Awareness Series, a collection of classroom materials for teaching students about the relationship between language and power. You can also hear her on the Critical Literacy in Practice podcast website.