Etsuko Kinefuchi, Ph.D.

Communication Studies

Etsuko Kinefuchi, Ph.D.

Etsuko Kinefuchi

Professor

e_kinefu@uncg.edu
105 Ferguson Building
336-334-5297

Affiliate Faculty Member: Department of Geography, Environment, and Sustainability

Specializations: Critical Intercultural Communication, Community Engagement, Qualitative Methods, Environmental Communication

Degrees:

  • Ph.D. Communication, Arizona State University
  • M.A. Speech Communication, Oregon State University
  • B.A. Speech Communication, Oregon State University

Scholarly interests:

Ecological approaches to culture, identity, and communication; environmental movement and
culture; ecofeminism, ecolinguistics, hegemony and resistance in identity discourse; critical
intercultural communication; diversity and multiculturalism; qualitative research methods.

Courses taught:

  • CST 200 Communication and Community
  • CST 399 Communication Research Methods
  • CST 337 Intercultural Communication
  • CST420: Environmental Communication
  • CST460: Climate Change Communication (course developed)
  • CST460: Communicating Rights: Humans and Nature (course developed)
  • CST 602 Engaging Communication Research Methodology
  • CST 635 Identity, Culture, and Communication
  • CST612: Critical Intercultural Communication (course developed)
  • CST612: Identity and Culture in the Age of Ecological Crises (course developed)
  • GES386: Sustainable Development and Equity.
  • GES686: Equity and Sustainability

 

Recent publications:

Kinefuchi, E. (2024). Where injustices (fail to) meet: Newspaper coverage of speciesism, animal rights and racism. In N. Khazaal, E. Gorsevski, & T. Linne (eds.), Media, Racism, Specieism: Issues and Solutions for Creaturely Racism in the Anthropocene. A special volume in Frontiers in Communication. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1467411

Kinefuchi, E. (2024). Burning Forests: The Wood Pellet Industry’s Framing of Sustainability and Its Shadow Places. In G. B. Walker, Y. Ma, & M. Kelly, & J. Veilleux (eds.), Towards 2030: Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life on land. A special volume in Frontiers in Communication. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1237141

Mendoza, S. L. & Kinefuchi, E. (2024). Ecological turn in intercultural communication revisited. In Rona T. Halualani and Thomas K. Nakayama (Ed.), The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (2nd ed.). Wiley.

Kinefuchi, E. (2024). Recovering the dots of social injustice and ecological violence: A case for critical intercultural communication. In Rona T. Halualani and Thomas K. Nakayama (Ed.), The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (2nd ed.). Wiley.

Kinefuchi, E. (2022). Wangari Maathai. R. Brinkmann (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Global Sustainability. Palgrave MacMillan.

Kinefuchi, E. (2022). Environmental racism in North America. R. Brinkmann (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Global Sustainability. Palgrave MacMillan.

Kinefuchi, E. (2022). Competing discourses on Japan’s nuclear power: Pronuclear versus antinuclear activism. London: Routledge (Routledge Studies in Environmental Communication and Media).

Jovanovic, S. & Kinefuchi, E. (2021). Change comes from the margins: Sustainability efforts in community-campus partnerships. No sustainability without justice, Volume II (An Anthology on Racial Equity and Social Justice). The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. https://www.aashe.org/racial-equity-social-justice/anthology/

Kinefuchi, E. (2021). Nuclear power and sustainability: A lesson from Japan.  F. Weder, L. Krainer, & M. Karmasin (Eds.), The Sustainability Communication Reader: A Reflective Compendium (pp. 379-396). Springer.

Kinefuchi, E. (2020). “Nature is healing”: Environmental infodemic and the pitfall of dualism. Journal of Environmental Media, 1(2), 3.1-3.8. doi: 10.1386/jem_00024_1

Buttny, R. & Kinefuchi, E. (2020). Vegans’ Problem Stories: Negotiating Vegan Identity in the World of Omnivores. Discourse and Society, 31(6), 565-583.

Kinefuchi, E. (2018). Wangari Maathai and mottainai: Gifting “cultural appropriation” with cultural empowerment. In E. Mbula Mutua, A. González, & A. Wolbert (Eds.), Planting the Future: The Rhetorical Legacy of Wangari Maathai. Rowman & Littlefield.

Kinefuchi, E. (2018). Critical discourse analysis and an ecological turn in intercultural communication. Review of Communication: Critical Discourse Studies and/in Communication: Theories, Methodologies, and Pedagogies at the Intersections (special issue). 18(3), 212-230. doi: 10.1080/15358593.2018.1479882

Kinefuchi, E. (2018). Production of the internal other in world risk society: Nuclear power, Fukushima, and the logic of colonization. In J. A. Drzewiecka & T. Nakayama (Eds.), Global perspective on culture: A reader. Peter Lang.

 Kinefuchi, E. (2017). Asian Pacific American Communication Studies. In A. Mike (Ed.), The Sage Encyclopedia of Communication Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Mendoza, S. L. & Kinefuchi, E. (2016). Two stories, one vision: A Plea for an ecological turn in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 9(4), 275-294. doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2016.1225451

(Received the distinguished article award for the best article from the International and Intercultural Communication Division, NCA, 2017)

Service:

  • Faculty Senate (2022-2025)
  • Chair, College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Assembly (2024-2025)
  • Academic Sustainability Coordinator, UNCG, 2018-2021
  • Global Engagement Implementation Advisory Committee (GEIAC) Chair, 2018-2019
  • Sustainability Council
  • Master of Science in Sustainability and Environment (MSSE) – Curriculum Committee and Advisory Committee
  • Board of Directors, The International Environmental Communication Association (2023-2027)
  • Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Editorial Board
  • Critical Studies in Media Communication Editorial Board

Affiliations:

  • International Environmental Communication Association 
  • International Communication Association