Rate My Professor Julie-Ann Scott

Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock is a Professor of Communication Studies and Performance Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Performance Studies and an M.A. in Communication from the University of Maine, as well as a B.A. in Communication and English from Gordon College. Since 2014, she has served as the founding director of UNCW Performance Studies, overseeing four undergraduate performance troupes—the UNCW Storytellers, Hawk Tale Players, Just Us Performance Troupe, and Black Box Experimental Theatre—that deliver accessible storytelling to K-8 classrooms, adult audiences, and national stages, promoting social inclusion and experiential learning.

Her research centers on narrative performance analysis, critical ethnographic performance, autoethnographic performance, and stigmatized embodiment, focusing on disability, illness, anxiety, memory loss, aging, mortality, whiteness, gender, and sexuality. Notable publications include the book Embodied Performance as Applied Research, Art and Pedagogy (2018); articles such as Performing marginalized embodiment in fitness culture: co-storytelling in/exclusion through personal narrative (2023, Text and Performance Quarterly), Witnessing the Danger We Knew Always New Was There: Our Gender Creative Son’s Response to the Insurrection (2022), And Then I Stopped Trying to Fit: A Tale of a White Visible/Disabled Scholar's Rejection of the Religion of Merit (2020), and Narrative Performance Research: Co-Storying Almost Passing (2015); and the award-winning solo performance Gazed At: Stories of a Mortal Body, livestreamed across five continents. Scott-Pollock has earned major honors including the 2024 University of North Carolina System Award for Teaching Excellence, 2024 Jim Ferris Award for Outstanding Contributions to Disability Studies and Communication, 2023 National Communication Association Mid-Career Award in Ethnography and Best Aural/Visual Ethnography Award, 2020 Lilla Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies, and multiple NCA Top Ethnographic awards (2018, 2015). She has chaired the NCA Performance Studies and Ethnography Divisions, served on the IDEA Council, and contributed to editorial boards for Liminalities, Text and Performance Quarterly, and others, advancing performance ethnography and inclusive pedagogy in communications.