Writing & Rhetoric Across Borders is proud to present: Beyond Punchlines, Deficits, and Fatigue: Piloting The Colorado Environmental Justice Digital Storytelling Project with Dr. Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In 2022, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) launched Colorado EnviroScreen, an increasingly popular quantitative spatial mapping tool governments are using to measure, prioritize, and hold accountable patterns of environmental injustice. As part of that initiative, the Colorado Environmental Justice Digital Storytelling Project was born, a collaboration between the CDPHE, people living in the most impacted zip codes, and members of a university class on the Foundations of Environmental Justice. The result of these partnerships piloted five ArcGIS StoryMaps in 2022. In this talk, Prof. Pezzullo talks about her positionality, as well as how multi-modal digital storytelling—including audio clips from interviews, photographs, and narratives—can counter deficit models of communication and ideally underscore the value of the public humanities. With their permission, she will highlight StoryMaps her students co-produced, including a rural predominantly Latinx community and the sovereign national of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, as well as why a community highlighted on Comedy Central didn’t make the first round.

Sponsored by:

Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse

Environmental Science and Studies

The College of Communication's Center for Communication Engagement

The Grace School of Applied Diplomacy

Mission & Ministry