2007 Conference on Communication and Environment

DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois
22-25 June, 2007

Friday, June 22

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Registration - Dorm Check In

5:00 - 7:30 p.m. Dinner & Keynote Lecture - Dr. Julian Agyeman, Associate Professor of Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University

Saturday, June 23

8:30 - 9:45 Session I

Twenty-five years after the Die is Cast: Mediating the Locus of the Irreparable

• The perpetual potential: An alternative view on the rhetoric of the irreparable - Stacey K. Sowards, University of Texas at El Paso
• Casting the Die in an Incontinent Truth: Constitutive rhetoric and dimensions of audience and time in the Locus of the Irreparable - Pete Bsumek, James Madison University
• From Awareness to Action: The Rhetorical Limits of Visualizing the Irreparable Nature of Global Climate Change - Richard D. Besel, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Love, Guilt and Reparation: Rethinking the Affective Dimensions of the Locus of the Irreparable - Renee Lertzman, Cardiff University, UK

Producing, Marketing, Consuming & Becoming Meat: Discourse of Meat at the Intersections of Nature and Culture

• How do you cook a ROCKY(r) and a ROSIE(r) Chicken?: An examination of the branding of "Sustainably Farmed" Meat - Leah Sprain, University of Washington
• Burgers, breasts, and Hummers: Meat and masculinity in contemporary television advertisements - Richard A. Rogers, Northern Arizona University
• Chewing on the Grizzly Man: Getting to the meat of the matter - Julie Kalil Schutten, University of Utah
• Continuing a queer dialogue: Treadwell's logics of desire in the Grizzly Man - Craig O. Rich, University of Utah

10:00 - 11:15 - Session II

The Trinity of Voice: Environmental Melodrama and Environmental Conflict

• Public participation in environmental planning and decision making by tribal governments: A case study of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation - Paige Schmidt
• Evaluation of the Relationship between Voice and Recruiting Strategies in the Texas Brigades Program and Opportunities for Public Participation - Eddie K. Lyons
• Piping Plover and People in One Place: A Case Study Evaluating Public Involvement at Cape Hatteras National Seashore - Lavell Merritt
• Using Trinity of Voice as a Means of Delimiting and Defusing Environmental Conflict in a Changing World: The Leon River in Central Texas - Israel Parker

Media Framing of Environmental Issues: Hurricanes, Ecoterrorism and Woody Harrelson

• Soundbytes and Celebrity Expertise in Contemporary Environmental Activism - Dylan Wolfe, Clemson University
• Win, lose or draw: Media framing of conservation easements - Jody M. Minion, Texas A&M University
• The whirling media coverage of seasonal hurricane forecasts: A closer look at media framing of scientific uncertainty and preparedness - Gina Eosco, Cornell University
• Reframing ecotage as ecoterrorism: News and the discourse of fear - Travis Wagner, University of Southern Maine
• The impact of religion, media, and science on the perception of environmental issues in the U.S. - Ellen Moore, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

11:30 - 12:45 - Session III

Communicating the Environmental Crisis of Nature and Culture

• Everyday life and death in a nuclear world - Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Indiana University
• Sidestepping (with) global warming in Alaska: Communicating crisis between tourism and professional censorship - Jonathan M. Gray, Southern Illinois University
• Crisis redux: September 11 and the Asbestos Hazard - Steve Schwarze, Univeristy of Montana
• Can you see what I see?: Assessing the effectiveness of toxic images - Jennifer Peeples, Utah State University

Strategies for Constructing the Environment through Public Participation

• Wal-Mart's presentation to the community on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement: Discourses of expertise and reassurance - Richard Buttny, Syracuse University
• Opening and shutting the door: Technology amplifies the public's voice surrounding a Superfund site's final days of production - Ann D. Jabro, Robert Morris University
• Enacting civil space: Integrating participatory communication and collaborative governance in the environmental policy and sustainable development arenas - Gregg Walker, Oregon State University Multi-voiced strategies in public participation dialogues: Grounding theory in practice - Caitlin Wills-Toker, Gainesville College; Jennifer duffield Hamilton, Center for Health and Environmental Studies

1:00 p.m. - Open Time

• Optional tour of Chicago natural sites: Tentative trip - Chicago's Lake Front - Lincoln Park, Montrose Point
• Baseball Fans? 12:05 p.m. Cross-Town Classic - Chicago Cubs at Chicago White Sox - U.S. Cellular Field Home of White Sox

5:00 - 6:00 p.m. reception held by Taylor & Francis publishers

6:00 - 7:00 p.m. The "Composters" Performance by Southern Illinois University Students

Sunday, June 24

8:30 - 9:45 - Session IV

Rural Life Between Nature & Culture

• Articulating rural modernization: Sustainability, modernity, and the country life movement - Jeff Motter, Indiana University, Bloomington
• Rural perspectives on rivers and watersheds: Environmental rhetoric (and resistance) in the backwoods - Emily Plec, Western Oregon University
• A sociable movement: Nature and culture, city and country, producers and consumers together at farmers' markets - Jean P. Retzinger, University of California, Berkeley
• Performing and sustaining (agri)culture and place: The cultivation of environmental subjectivity on the Piedmont Farm Tour - Cindy M. Spurlock, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Nature/Culture Dualism: Communication Strategies at the Intersections of Nature and Culture

• Identification through orangutans: Destabilizing the nature/culture dualism - Stacey K. Sowards, University of Texas at El Paso
• Putting the Human Animal at Ease with Itself: Deconstructing the False Human/Animal Dichotomy - Carrie Packwood Freeman, University of Oregon
• When "There are no words" and when whales "Kind of Speak for Themselves": An ethnographic exploration of communication as a mediating force in Canada and U.S. whale watch tourism -Tema Milstein, University of Washington
• Natural manipulation: Orogenesis and erosion in digital landscape and "Redemption of Physical Reality"-Leigh A. Bernacchi, University of Utah

10:00 - 11:15 - Session V

Narratives, Rhetorical Genres and Environmental Conflict: Responses to Schwarze's "Environmental Melodrama"

• Kairos: Time to get down to it (should have been done long ago) - Pete Bsumek, James Madison University
• Environmental devils - Terence Check, St. Johns University
• Identity, community, and risk: Some constitutive consequences of environmental melodrama - William J. Kinsella, North Carolina State University
• Global warming: Ultimate melodrama - Tarla Rai Peterson, Texas A&M University
• Civic investment and civic voice: Environmental melodrama in citizens' discourse at collaborative learning forums - Gregg B. Walker, Oregon State University

Spoiled and Spoiling Spaces: Communicative Strategies in response to Perceived and Real Environmental Crisis

• Muting the voice of the local in the age of the global: How communication practices compromised public participation in India's Allain Duhangan Environmental Impact Assessment - Terri Martin, University of Utah
• Signs, symbols, and communication: Reaching mutuality at a chemical manufacturing site - Ann D. Jarbo, Robert Morris University
• Victims "in" and protectors "of" Appalachia: A frame analysis of Mixing Mountains: We Went to the Mountaintop, but it Wasn't There"-Joshua Ewalt and James Cantrill, Northern Michigan University
• Establishing dialogic spaces between local and scientific knowledge: Evaluating metal contamination in the Sao Francisco River, Brazil-Erida Ferreira Araujo Silva, Antonio Aparecido Mozeto, Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo-Brazil & Joachim Carolsfeld, World Fisheries Trust

11:30 - 12:45 - Session VI

Step It Up 2007: A National Research Project on Climate Change

• Daniel Endres - University of Utah
• William J. Kinsella, North Carolina State University
• Damon Hall - Texas A&M University
• Deborah Callister - University of Utah
• Leah Sprain - University of Washington
• Todd Norton - Washington State University
• Travis Paveglio - Washington State University
• Traceylee Clarke - California State University, Sacramento
• Trudy Milburn - California State University, Channel Islands
• Michael Vickery - Alma College
• Nils Peterson - Michigan State University

1:00 - Open Time

• Optional tour of Chicago Natural site: Tentative trip - Jackson Park - Landscape History
• Baseball Fans? Cross-town classic - Chicago Cubs vs. Chicago White Sox at the U.S. Cellular Field - White Sox Home / Time TBD

Evening on Own

Monday, June 25

8:30 - 9:45 Session VII

Ways of Living, Ways of Speaking: International Case Studies in Environmental Communication

• From pointing and naming to speaking for whales: A study of communicative acts as they inform human-nature relations - Tema Oliveira Milstein, University of Washington
• The other power: Ecotourism discourse and its ability to shape the western imagination - Kerry Grimm, Oregon State University
• Environmental communication in community: The Findhorn Foundation experience - Laura Perkins, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
• Finding connections: Report on a preliminary investigation of community capacity for environmental protection in Soweto, South Africa - Andrew Pleasant, Rutgers University; Patrick Kwelepata -Director, Mayibuye KlipRiver Wetland Rehabilitation Project Soweto, South Africa

Communicating about Climate Change: Risk, Conflict, and Perception

• Perceptions of climate change risks and mitigation behaviors: Understanding inconsistencies between representations and action"-Alexandra Lazaro, Rosa Cabecinhas, & Anabela Carvalho, Instituto de Ciencias Sociais, Universidade do Minho
• Tipping point forewarnings of climate change: Some implications of an emerging trend - Chris Russill, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• The global climate change issue: An issue of legitimacy in the media-Andrea Feldpausch, Texas A&M University

10:00 - 11:15 - Session VIII

The Embodiment of Risk: Case Studies n Environmental Communication & Material Rhetoric

• Body's burden: Biomonitoring and the new epistemology of risk - Kelly E. Happe, Northern Illinois University
• Constructing the innocent body: An analysis of the appeals in the body burden in newborns report - Maggie VanNorman, University of Minnesota
• Vulnerable bodies, burdens of proof: The anti-nuclear activism of Mothers for Peace - Marilyn Bordwell DeLaure, University of San Francisco

Environmental Politics & Policy: Entering the Fray

• The American Dream: Consumerism, tourism, & wilderness - Tracy Marafiote, SUNY - Fredonia, NY
• Frame dispute between USDA and U.S. organic agriculture movement organizations (1990 - 2002) -Joshua J. Frye, Purdue University
• The Green Party in presidential election 2008: A preliminary case study of the rhetorical situation at the start of a campaign season -David Tschida, St. Cloud State University
• Public participation through public science: Scientific argument in the Yucca Mountain Controversy -Danielle Endres, University of Utah

11:30 - 12:45 - Session IX

Public Participation and Decision Making: Rituals, Conflict, and Interpretations of Environmental Issues

• Beyond political efficacy: The rituals of environmental public meetings - Katherine McComas, Cornell University
• Stakeholder dynamics at the intersection of property and fire: Conflict, cohesion, and communicative practices -Travis Paveglio, Washington State University; Todd Norton, Washington State University
• An interpretive analysis of core values of agriculturalists of the Yellowstone River - Cristi Choat Horton, Texas A&M University
• Communicating biodiversity in Swedish management organizations - Petra Bengtsson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Green Commerce: Negotiating Capitalism and Environmentalism in the U.S.

• Advertising in Time Magazine during oil price spikes: An analysis of print ads in 1979-1980 and 2004-2005 - Rich Grogan, Michigan State University
• TreeHugger TV: Re-Visualizing environmental activism in the post-network era-Lisa Slawter, University of Georgia
• Ambivalent naturism: Prejudice and the treatment of nature inside and outside the mall -Christopher N. Gamble, The Pennsylvania State University
• Bridging ecocentrism and anthropocentrism discursively and materially: Ecopreneurship as (gendered) sustainable development - Rebecca Gill, University of Utah

1:00 - End of conference