Emily Polk
PWR Advanced Lecturer
Writing and Rhetoric Studies
Bio
Emily Polk is a writer, teacher, scholar, and mother who teaches and writes about community-led responses to climate change, the mobilization of social movements, and climate equity. She developed and taught some of the first courses at Stanford University on Gender and Climate Change, Communicating Climate Change, and Environmental Justice Storytelling. Prior to getting her doctorate, she worked as a human rights and environment–focused writer and editor for nearly ten years around the world, helping to produce radio documentaries in Burmese refugee camps, and facilitating a human rights-based newspaper in a Liberian refugee camp. She has also worked as an editor at Whole Earth Magazine and at CSRwire, a leading global source of corporate social responsibility news. Her own writing and radio documentaries have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, the Boston Globe, NPR, The National Radio Project, AlterNet, Central America Weekly, the Ghanaian Chronicle, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her book, Communicating Global to Local Resiliency: A Case Study of the Transition Movement, was released in 2015. Her recent article, "Communicating Climate Change: What went wrong, how can we do better?" was published in the Handbook of Communication for Development and Social Change and is used in classrooms in the US and around the world.
She is an Advanced Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric and has a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Masters in Human Rights from Columbia University. Emily's courses focus on global development, climate change, and environmental justice, and invite students to interrogate the discourses (and assumptions) around the approaches, methods, and ideologies regarding how and when social change happens.
Academic Appointments
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PWR Advanced Lecturer, Writing and Rhetoric Studies
Administrative Appointments
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Coordinator Notation in Science Communication, Program in Writing and Rhetoric (2021 - 2024)
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Writing Specialist, School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences (2015 - 2020)
Honors & Awards
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Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching, Stanford University (2020)
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Excellence in Teaching, School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences (2019)
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Haas Center Faculty Fellow, Haas Center For Public Service (2019)
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Environmental Justice Discourse and Literature; Climate Change Communication and the Arts; Community Engaged Learning; Global Social Movements
2024-25 Courses
- Environmental Justice and Human Rights Lab
EARTHSYS 196A, HUMRTS 196 (Win) - Environmental Storytellers Collective
EARTHSYS 131J (Win) - Intermediate Writing: Introduction to Science Communication
PWR 91NSC (Aut) - Wild Writing
EARTHSYS 149, EARTHSYS 249 (Spr) - Writing & Rhetoric 1: The Rhetoric of Global Development and Social Change
PWR 1EP (Win) -
Independent Studies (1)
- Directed Individual Study in Earth Systems
EARTHSYS 297 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
- Directed Individual Study in Earth Systems
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Prior Year Courses
2023-24 Courses
- Environmental Justice and Human Rights Lab
HUMRTS 196 (Win) - NSC Portfolio Preparation I
PWR 99ANSC (Spr) - NSC Portfolio Preparation II
PWR 99BNSC (Win) - Portfolio Preparation I
PWR 99A (Aut) - Wild Writing
EARTHSYS 149, EARTHSYS 249 (Spr) - Writing & Rhetoric 2: Trekkers, Trampers, and Travelers: Storytelling On The World's Trails
PWR 2EPD (Aut)
2022-23 Courses
- Environmental Communication Capstone
EARTHSYS 294 (Aut, Spr) - Environmental Justice Storytelling: Writing for Impact
EARTHSYS 91EJ, PWR 91EPA (Aut) - Environmental Justice and Human Rights Lab
EARTHSYS 196A, HUMRTS 196 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Portfolio Preparation I
PWR 99A (Aut, Spr) - Portfolio Preparation II
PWR 99B (Win) - Wild Writing
EARTHSYS 149, EARTHSYS 249 (Spr)
2021-22 Courses
- Environmental Justice Colloquium
EARTHSYS 194A, HUMRTS 194A, URBANST 155A (Aut) - Environmental Justice and Human Rights Lab
EARTHSYS 196A, HUMRTS 196 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Portfolio Preparation I
PWR 99A (Aut, Spr) - Portfolio Preparation II
PWR 99B (Win) - Topics in Writing & Rhetoric: Introduction to Environmental Justice: Race, Class, Gender and Place
EARTHSYS 194, ENVRES 223, PWR 194EP (Aut) - Wild Writing
EARTHSYS 149, EARTHSYS 249 (Spr)
- Environmental Justice and Human Rights Lab
Stanford Advisees
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Doctoral Dissertation Reader (NonAC)
Tanya Arora
All Publications
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Communities conditionally support deployment of direct air capture for carbon dioxide removal in the United States (vol 5, 175, 2024)
COMMUNICATIONS EARTH & ENVIRONMENT
2024; 5 (1)
View details for DOI 10.1038/s43247-024-01384-w
View details for Web of Science ID 001205531200002
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Communities conditionally support deployment of direct air capture for carbon dioxide removal in the United States
COMMUNICATIONS EARTH & ENVIRONMENT
2024; 5 (1)
View details for DOI 10.1038/s43247-024-01334-6
View details for Web of Science ID 001196970200001
- Integrating community based participatory research approaches into climate justice digital media projects Youth Created Media on the Climate Crisis: Hear Our Voices Routledge. 2023; 1: 17
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Fostering Climate Crisis Global Literacies in the Classroom
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBAL LITERACIES
2023: 230-246
View details for DOI 10.4324/9781003320142-18
View details for Web of Science ID 001184877000015
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Towards an ocean-based large ocean states country classification
MARINE POLICY
2021; 134
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104766
View details for Web of Science ID 000697681600016
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Situating the Scientist: Creating Inclusive Science Communication Through Equity Framing and Environmental Justice
Frontiers in Communication
2020
View details for DOI 10.3389/fcomm.2020.00006
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Communicating Climate Change: Where Did We Go Wrong, How Can We Do Better?
Handbook of Communication for Development and Social Change
Springer. 2018
View details for DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7035-8_26-1
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Momentum in the age of sustainability Building up and burning out in a transition town
PERMA/CULTURE: IMAGINING ALTERNATIVES IN AN AGE OF CRISIS
2018: 97–105
View details for Web of Science ID 000474509400006
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Sustainability and Participatory Communication: A Case Study of the Transition Town Amherst, Massachusetts
MANAGEMENT COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY
2015; 29 (1): 160-167
View details for DOI 10.1177/0893318914563572
View details for Web of Science ID 000347954200010
- Communicating Global to Local Resiliency: A Case Study of the Transition Movement Lexington Books. 2015
- Revolutions, Social Media, and the Digitization of Dissent: Communicating Social Change in Egypt Sustainability, Participation, and Culture in Communication edited by Servaes, J. Intellect. 2013: 137–152
- Folk Media Meets Digital Technology for Sustainable Social Change: A Case Study of the Center for Digital Storytelling Global Media Journal 2010; 10 (17): 30