Environmental Communication Division
Interest Group Awards
Listed here are awards given by the Interest Group to its members. Interests Groups are smaller communities within NCA's large membership that provide a range of resources including networking opportunities, Annual Convention programming, leadership opportunities, awards, and specialized information dissemination channels, among others.
Read more about this Interest Group.
Tarla Rai Peterson Book Award in Environmental Communication (Formerly the Christine L. Oravec Research Award in Environmental Communication (book category))
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Jenell Johnson, Every Living Thing: The Politics of Life in Common (Penn State University Press, 2023) |
| 2022 | Joshua Trey Barnett, Mourning in the Anthropocene: Ecological Grief and Earthly Coexistence (Michigan State University Press, 2022) |
| 2021 | Catalina M. de Onís, Energy Islands: Metaphors of Power, Extractivism, and Justice in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2021) |
| 2020 | Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (Routledge, 2020) |
| 2019 | Leilani Nishime and Kim D. Hester Williams (editors), Racial Ecologies (University of Washington Press, 2018) |
| 2018 | Bridie McGreavy, Justine Wells, George F. McHendry Jr., & Samantha Senda-Cook, Tracing Rhetoric and Material Life: Ecological Approaches (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) |
| 2017 | Tema Milstein, Mairi Pileggi, and Eric Morgan, Environmental Communication Pedagogy and Practice (Routledge, 2017) |
| 2016 | Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, Peter K. Bsumek, and Jennifer Peeples |
| 2015 | Myria Allen, Strategic Communication for Sustainable Organizations: Theory and Practice (Springer, 2015) |
| 2014 | Anna Marie Todd, Communicating Environmental Patriotism: A Rhetorical History of the American Environmental Movement (Routledge, 2013) |
| 2013 | Emily Plec, Perspectives on Human-Animal Communication: Internatural Communication (Routledge, 2012) |
| 2011 | Brendan Larson, Metaphors for environmental sustainability: Redefining our relationship with nature (Yale University Press, 2011) |
| 2010 | Danielle Endres, Leah Sprain, and Tarla Rai Peterson, Social Movement to Address Climate Change (Cambria, 2009) |
| 2008 | Bryan Taylor, Stephen Depoe, William Kinsella, and Maribeth Metzler, Nuclear legacies: Communication, controversy, and the U.S. nuclear weapons complex (Lexington Books, 2007) |
| 2007 | Phaedra Pezzullo, Toxic tourism: Rhetorics of pollution, travel, and environmental justice (University of Alabama Press, 2007) |
| 2006 | Robert Cox |
Christine L. Oravec Research Award in Environmental Communication (journal manuscript)
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Samantha Senda-Cook & Emma Frances Bloomfield, “Building Coalitions from Shared Pieties: Polyvocal Religious Environmentalism at the Asian Rural Institute,” published in Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture in 2023. |
| 2022 | Denise Tillery & Emma Frances Bloomfield, "Hyperrationality and Rhetorical Constellations in Digital Climate Change Denial: A Multi-Methodological Analysis of the Discourse of Watts up with That," published in Technical Communication Quarterly in 2022. |
| 2021 | Sarah De Los Santos Upton, Carlos A. Tarin, & Leandra H. Hernández, "Construyendo Conexiones Para Los Niños: Environmental Justice, Reproductive Feminicidio, and Coalitional Possibility in the Borderlands," published in Health Communication in 2021. |
| 2020 | José Castro-Sotomayor, "Emplacing Climate Change: Civic Action at the Margins" |
| 2019 | Constance Gordon & Kathleen Hunt, "Reform, Justice, and Sovereignty: A Food Systems Agenda for Environmental Communication," published in Environmental Communication in 2019. |
| 2017 | Tema Milstein, "The Performer Metaphor: 'Mother Nature Never Gives Us the Same Show Twice,'" published in Environmental Communication in 2015. |
| 2016 | Bridie McGreavy, "Resilience as Discourse", published in Environmental Communication in 2016. |
| 2015 | William Kinsella, Dorothy Andreas, & Danielle Endres, “Communicating Nuclear Power: a Programmatic Review," published in Communication Yearbook in 2015. |
| 2014 | Pete Bsumek, Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, & Jennifer Peeples, “Corporate Ventriloquism”, published in Under Pressure Coal Industry Rhetoric and Neoliberalism in 2014. |
| 2013 | Donal Carbaugh & Tovar Cerulli, “Cultural Discourses of Dwelling: Investigating Environmental Communication as a Place-Based Practice," published in Environmental Communicatio in 2013. |
| 2012 | Jennifer Peeples, “Toxic sublime: Imagining contaminated landscapes." published in Environmental Communication in 2012. |
| 2011 | Michael Salvador & Tracylee Clarke, “The Weyekin Principle: Toward an embodied critical rhetoric," published in Environmental Communication in 2010. |
| 2010 | Ross Singer, “Neoliberal style, the American Re-Generation, and Ecological Jeremiad in Thomas Friedman’s ‘Code Green,'" published in Environmental Communication in 2010. |
| 2009 | Tema Milstein, “When Wales ‘speak for themselves’: Communication as a mediating force in wildlife tourism," published in Environmental Communication in 2009. |
| 2006 | William Kinsella |
Stephen P. Depoe Book Chapter Award in Environmental Communication
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Andra M. Feldpausch-Parker & Danielle Endres, "Energy Democracy: An Introduction," published in Routledge Handbook of Energy Democracy in 2021. |
| 2022 | Tema Milstein & Gabi Mocatta, “Environmental Communication Theory and Practice for Global Transformation: An Ecocultural Approach,” published in Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory in 2022. |
| 2021 | Xinghua Li, “Selling the ‘Wild’ in China: Ancient Values, Consumer Desires, and the Quyeba Advertising Campaign,” published in Green Communication and China: On Crisis, Care, and Global Futures in 2020. |
| 2020 | Kelsey Husnick, Mostafa Aniss, and Rahul Mitra, "Naturalizing Environmental Injustice: How Privileged Residents Make Sense of Detroit's Water Shutoffs" |
| 2019 | Carlos Tarin, "Fronteras Tóxicas: Toward a Borderland Ecological Consciousness" |
| 2017 | Danielle Endres, Brian Cozen, Joshua Trey Barnett, Megan O'byrne, and Tarla Rai Peterson, "Communicating Energy in a Climate (of) Crisis" |
J. Robert Cox Award in Environmental Communication and Civic Engagement
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Maria Blevins |
| 2022 | Bridie McGreavy |
| 2021 | Stacey K. Sowards |
| 2020 | Tarla Rai Peterson |
| 2019 | Phaedra C. Pezzullo |
| 2018 | Gregg B. Walker |
| 2017 | James G. Cantrill |
| 2016 | Jonathan Gray |
| 2015 | Leah Sprain |
| 2014 | Pete Bsumek |
| 2013 | Stephen Depoe |
| 2012 | Susan Senecah |
Top Student Paper Award
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2023 | David Rooney, “They Want to Kill Our Cows. That Means Your Next: White Masculine Victimhood and the Green New Deal's War on Hamburgers” |
| 2022 | Michael Warren Cook & Mikayla Torres, “The Four R’s, Ecology and Academic Kinship: Decolonial Turns for Rhetorical Studies” |
| 2021 | Isabel Villanueva, Austen Saunders, & Sarah Buechner, “Moral Foundations Theory and Nuclear Energy: The Complementary Roles of Elaboration and Emotional Activation in Social Media Sharing Intentions" |
| 2020 | Joshua H. Smith & Jordan Christiansen, "Bears Ears and the Inter-Tribal Coalition: Ecological Decolonial Rhetorics for Collaborative Land Management" |
| 2019 | Jacob Miller, "Surviving the Anthropocene calls for an ecospheric rhetoric" |
| 2018 | Kevin Calderwood, "Going Global: Climate Change Discourse in Presidential Communictions" |
| 2017 | Stephanie Marek Muller, "Where the Buffalo Roam(ed): Frontier Yearnings and the 'Last Big Buffalo Hunt' of 1926" |
| 2016 | Joshua Trey Barnett, "Ecological Thanatorhetorics: Death and Environmentalism" |
| 2015 | Piper Corp, “Surviving evolution with rhetoric: Tapping the resources of Burke’s symbol-using animal in a Latourian world” |
| 2014 | Kathleen de Onis, “Eco-delinking: Extracting natural gas advocacy rhetoric and exploring its implications for Puerto Rico and beyond” |
| 2013 | Casey R. Schmitt, “If a Text Falls in the Woods…: Intertextuality, Environmental Perception, and the Non-Authored Text” |
| 2012 | Deborah Cox Callister, “Humor as Rhetorical Strategy: Comic and Melodramatic Frames in Environmental Coalition Building” |
| 2011 | Patrick Belanger, “Defending the Fort: Michael Crichton, Pulp Fiction, and Green Conspiracy” |
| 2010 | Keally DeWitt, “The (priestly) voice of the scientist in the climate change debate: A rhetorical analysis of Dr. James Hansen’s ‘Global Warming Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near’” |
Top Paper Award
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Joshua Trey Barnett, “Troubling Ecologies of Violent Care: Thinking with Invasive Species” |
| 2022 | Michael Warren Cook & Mikayla Torres, “The Four R’s, Ecology and Academic Kinship: Decolonial Turns for Rhetorical Studies” |
| 2021 | Brian Cozen & Danielle E. Endres, "The Nuclear Zelus: Climate-Oriented Imaginaries Among Nuclear Energy Professionals” |
| 2020 | Megan O'Byrne & Danielle E. Endres, "This Land is our Land: Protesting to Protect Places on the Margin" |
| 2019 | Haoran Chu & Janet Yang, "Emotion and the Psychological Distance of Climate Change" |
| 2018 | Ross Singer, "On Ecofeminist Theory and the Promise of Ecofeminist Communication Studies" |
| 2017 | Stephanie Marek Muller, "Where the Buffalo Roam(ed): Frontier Yearnings and the 'Last Big Buffalo Hunt' of 1926" |
| 2016 | Abel Gustafson and Ronald Rice, "Reducing the Uncertainty and Controversy about Uncertainty and Controversy Framing in Research on Climate Change Journalism" |
| 2015 | Jessica Thompson and Jose Aburto, “Ecosystem-what? Public understanding and trust in conservation science and ecosystem services” |
| 2014 | Jen Schneider, Steven Schwarze, Peter Bsumek, and Jennifer Peeples, “The strategic ambiguity of clean coal rhetoric” |
| 2013 | Teresa Myers, John Kotcher, Neil Stenhouse, Ashley Anderson, and Edward W. Maibach, “Predictors of Trust in the General and Climate Scientific Research of US Federal Scientific Organizations” |
| 2012 | Mahuya Pal and J. Jacob Jenkins, “Reimagining sustainability: An interrogation of the Corporate Knights’ Global 100” |
| 2011 | Anna Marie Todd, “Toward a Theory of Environmental Patriotism” |
| 2010 | Ross Singer, “The USDA People’s Garden Initiative and the rhetorical suppression of environmental and agro-food industry sustainability” |
Catalina de Onís Dissertation Award in Environmental Communication
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2023 | Cynthia P. Rosenfeld, “Vulnerable Flourishings: Building More-Than-Human Worlds with Digital Rhetoric” |
| 2022 | JungKyu Rhys Lim, “Developing Effective Communication for Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Mitigation” |
| 2021 | Taylor N. Johnson, "The Fight for Bears Ears: Toward a Decolonial Rhetoric of Public Participation in Environmental Decision-Making" |
| 2020 | Melissa M. Parks, "From Redwoods Preservation to Genomic Restoration: Genocentric Ecologies in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries" |
| 2019 | Constance Gordon, Troubling “Access”: Rhetorical Cartographies of Food (In)Justice and Gentrification |
| 2018 | Abel T. Gustafson, "The Nature and Effects of Uncertainty Frames in Science Communication" |
| 2017 | Catalina de Onis, "Energy Remix: Decolonial Discourses of Decarbonization" |
Outstanding Voice in Environmental Communication
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2019 | Catalina de Onis |
Recognition of Excellence in Service
| Year | Award Winner |
|---|---|
| 2011 | Todd Norton |