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Annual Symposium

Every year, the PWSA hosts a themed symposium to showcase undergraduate students’ writing, thinking, and expressions through multimodal forms. We invite you to participate in this opportunity to share ideas, reflect on personal experiences, and network with peers. View our past and present events below.

Call for 2024 Symposium Submissions: CLOSED

R/evolve

2024
We find our identities, our legacies, and our perceptions transforming with the seasons. To walk away with our flowers, we learn to maneuver through the labyrinth—a pattern so unpredictable and non-linear—on our way to the blossoming garden. R/EVOLVE is re-evolving into the person we need to become to get to where we want and to take from life what we need. It is a revolution of ourselves with all the obstacles and thorns thrown our way as we fleet through time and space. Like the passing of the years, changing of the seasons, and blooming of the Spring flowers, we evolve with every revolution. As life runs its cycle, we R/EVOLVE.
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Sententia

2023
When change is constant, writing can be a powerful expression. Sententia evokes not only ways of living, but ways of knowing, ways of being and thinking and writing, which, in times of flux, open the possibility for transformation and writerly acts of resistance. In this, the 5th annual PWSA Symposium, our ten panelists explored the power we have to make our own stories and spaces and selves - to activate sententia as a call to writerly action and resistance, to dismantle and decolonize dominant “instructions in living,” to explore diverse ways of acting, speaking, living, knowing, being, thinking, writing—and languaging—in sonic acts of sententia.
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Metanoia

2022
In her essay “Metanoic Movement: The Transformative Power of Regret,” Kelly Meyers tells us that “…metanoia illuminates the spaces that exist around and beyond opportune moments…[and] offers a way to expand ‘opportunity’ in writing processes.” In other words, it encourages us to “learn to see and seize the potential for transformation that exists within experiences of regret.” Myers’ essay launched the 2022 Symposium panelists into reflective and innovative examinations of the ways metanoia not only “offers ways to reframe the affective elements of…learning, writing and revising,” but also how it works, in recursive and re-orienting ways “to expand ‘opportunity’ in writing processes” –and in life.
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Liminalities

2021
In April 2021, Liminalities explored this transition, filled with uncertainty, ambiguity, and hybridity, carrying the potential for disruption, subversion, and most of all, change. In this space, new meanings, new relations, and new identities are produced and old familiarities are transformed.
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Mindscapes

2020
Held in April 2020, the PWSA's Mindscapes symposium covered an assortment of topics focused on mental health and addictions, race, diaspora literature and experiences, sexuality, moments of kairos, alternative points of view on popular opinions, gender, expressions of individuality and identity, persuasive essays, life-changing moments and opening minds.

Outlines

2019
On April 25, 2019, fifteen panelists who spent the past year (or two) putting into words their insightful and revolutionary ideas shared them with students, faculty, and the York community. It was a day of celebration, and of honouring the intelligence and impact of undergraduate writing and research. We are excited to share their pieces here for you to read. You will find words of change, of passion and of empowerment that will make you think, reflect and question your current perspectives

Are you an undergraduate student looking to publish your work?

Stay tuned for the annual Symposium call for submissions!