Dr. Emerson Cram, an associate professor in the Departments of Communication Studies and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, brings expertise in frameworks of critical environmental justice that center recursive relationships between race, disability, sexuality and the environment. 

Their first book, Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West (University of California Press, 2022) examines the history of sexuality in the US as a story about energy to contextualize the regenerative and land-based practice of queer ecology today. Written for scholars in queer studies and the environmental/energy humanities, this book highlights how various regional communities engage cultural and environmental legacies of harm to reimagine violent ecologies through practices of care, healing, and regeneration. Violent Inheritance is the awardee of the Rhetoric Society of America’s 2023 Book Award, and the National Communication Association’s 2023 GLBTQ Communication Studies Division Book Award.