Phaedra Pezzullo

Dr. Pezzullo earned her M.A. in 1998 and her Ph.D. in 2002 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both in Communication Studies. She also holds a B.A. in Social Thought and Political Economy and a B.S. in Natural Resources from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1996).

From 2002 to 2015, Dr. Pezzullo held academic appointments at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. She earned tenure in the Department of Communication and Culture in 2008.

In 2015, Pezzullo accepted an appointment in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she currently holds the position of Associate Professor.

As of Spring 2017, Pezzullo also serves on the editorial board of several academic journals, including Cultural Studies, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication Monographs, Environmental Communication, and Quarterly Journal of Speech.

Pezzullo is best known as an author of Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Travel, Pollution, and Environmental Justice (2007), which won the Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book Award (Urban Communication Foundation, 2010), the James A. Winans-Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric/Public Address (National Communication Association, 2007), the Christine L. Oravec Research Award in Environmental Communication (NCA, 2007), and the Book of the Year Award for the Critical and Cultural Studies Division (NCA, 2007). Pezzullo has brought attention to the modern issues of environmental justice in a world of consumerism and political economics. She discusses and analyzes these topics in terms of communication and social effects (along with their interaction with demographics like race and gender) in her book, Toxic Tourism, and in many of her published articles.

She also coauthored Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere, 4th Edition (2016) alongside Robert Cox, which remains the leading comprehensive resource facilitating the expansion of the growing environmental communication field. This book gives an overview of the field of environmental communication. It discusses the history and development of the field, the modern implications of the field, and the ways humans and the environment interact with and influence each other. It also talks about how human beings react to environmental issues or problems, and how we choose to act in relation to these perceived problems.

Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement (2007), which Pezzullo editted alongside Professor of Philosophy Ronald Sandler, has received considerable academic attention for its environmental advocacy and provocative ideas about the environmental movement. The book discusses the tensions and angles of two intertwined movements of environmentalism and environmental justice. The former has been criticized by the latter for perceived racism, elitism, and lack of humanitarian concern. The text also analyzes both sides in context of changing climate, environmental laws, and attitudes in the US.

Related to Pezzullo's environmental focus is her concern with "pinkwashing," a phenomenon discussed in her article Resisting "National Breast Cancer Awareness Month": The Rhetoric of Counterpublics and their Cultural Performances. The idea of pinkwashing centers on businesses' disingenuous participation in National Breast Cancer Awareness Month not out of concern for health, but for purposes of cosmetic targeting, gendered performance, and public relations. Pezzullo says these campaigns fail to address environmental pollution as a large cause of breast cancer, possibly because the corporations in question contribute to this very pollution. In reality, pinkwashing a campaign is a way for businesses to appear moral while earning more money from consumers who believe they are contributing to a just cause, as the campaigns increasingly focus on gendered images of beauty, breasts, and pink imagery.

Dr. Pezzullo is a highly recognized scholar in her field. In addition to her book awards, she has received the following awards and honors:

• The Lambda Pi Eta Undergraduate Teaching Award, Indiana University Dept. of Communication and Culture, 2004 & 2015.
• Presidential Service Award, National Communication Association, 2009.
• New Investigator Award, Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division, National Communication Association, 2008.
• The Faculty Mentor Award, the Indiana University Graduate and Professional Student Organization (GPSO), 2005.
• Trustee's Teaching Award, Indiana University Dept. of Communication & Culture, 2004–2005.