If you are a practitioner or teacher working in the field of technical communication, environmental education, science communication, or public health, Embodied Environmental Risk in Technical Communication: Problems and Solutions Toward Social Sustainability (edited by Mary Le Rouge and Steven Stinson) will provide you with a valuable perspective and give great food for thought. Editors Le Rouge and Stinson provide a collection meant “to provide an understanding of environmental risk that promotes social justice.” The editors consider improving technical communication through an understanding of environmental risk promoting social justice. They organize the collection effectively into three groups covering:
- Representations of the human body
- Representations of Earth’s body
- Representations of human beings and Earth together
As a reader might expect from a book on risk communication, the material in the section on representations of the human body deals in many cases with communication about the risks related to COVID-19 with one piece about how to communication effectively via email with college students on this topic. In the section on representations on Earth’s body, one of the pieces concerns communicating information about the pollution in the Ohio River.
Le Rouge is director of writing at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She is also a member of the Conference on College Composition & Communication and its Environmental Special Interest Group. She has looked in her research for ways to improve communication between the public and policymakers. She received a PhD in English from Kent State, master’s degree in publishing from George Washington University, and bachelor’s degree in political science from Ohio State. She has spoken at conferences about the difficulties that scientists face when communicating with the public about environmental issues. Stinton is assistant professor of English at Minot State University where he is coordinator of the English concentration in the M.Ed. program.
By Jeanette Evans