Intersectional Activism in Environmental Communication

Emma Frances Bloomfield is an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies environmental communication and scientific controversies. She is the winner of the 2024 Early Career Award from the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division of the National Communication Association. She is the author of Science v. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators (2024) and Communication Strategies for Engaging Climate Skeptics: Religion and the Environment (2019). Her research has been profiled in national and international media outlets such as The Guardian, National Public Radio, Variety, Grist, and Popular Science. She is the founder and director of the Public Communication Initiative, housed in UNLV’s Greenspun College of Urban Affairs, which conducts original research and leads workshops on technical-public relationships, communication skills, and community engagement.José Castro-Sotomayor is an assistant professor of environmental communication at California State University Channel Islands. His work delves into the environmental and intercultural dynamics of policy development and community building. As a community-based research faculty fellow at CSUCI, he designs and implements identity-based participatory communication models for environmental conflict resolution. He coedited the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020), which received the Tarla Rai Peterson Book Award from the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association. He serves on editorial boards of several journals in the communication field, including Frontiers in Communication, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Environmental Communication. He is part of the Environmental and Climate Change Literacy Projects, a University of California–California State University network dedicated to advancing K–12 climate literacy initiatives in California, and with the Beach Sustainability Assessment he works on interdisciplinary projects that address beach accessibility justice in California.

“Intersectional Activism in Environmental Communication contributes to and reconceptualizes existing scholarship on environmental activism in environmental communication, rhetorical studies, and interdisciplinary fields. Through a diverse set of topics, cases, and voices, the authors show how intersectionality, as an analytic, attends to the pervasive influence of interconnected structures of oppression and the complexity and multiplicity of identity in the context of environmental activism. As a collection, this book highlights how intersectionality can help make our movements for change more equitable, transformative, and just.”— Bridie McGreavy, associate professor at University of Maine and coauthor of Rhetorical Climatology“An important, useful, and timely book. The interesting activism-focused chapters within this volume expand the application of intersectional theory in the field of environmental communication, simultaneously strengthening the justice scope of the field and bringing ecological focus to broader intersectional inquiry.” —Tema Milstein, professor of environment and society, University of New South Wales Sydney, and coeditor of Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity and Environmental Communication Pedagogy and Practice“Intersectional Activism in Environmental Communication amplifies the scholarship of a new wave of environmental communication research that cares about how social and environmental identities intersect. From collective action to eco-celebrities, this volume spotlights how the most significant critical interruptions of climate and environmental justice advocacy is grounded in matters of ecology, economy, and equity.”—Phaedra C. Pezzullo, professor at University of Colorado Boulder and author of Beyond Straw Men: Plastic Pollution and Networked Cultures of Care