Even in the closest of relationships, things can go wrong. This volume takes an honest look at difficulties, dilemmas and challenges in relationships and examines useful management and tolerance skills.
Topics explored include: anger; having enemies; the family after divorce; interpersonal violence; codependency; HIV//AIDS; chronic illness; and bereavement.
Steve Duck taught in the United Kingdom before taking up the Daniel and Amy Starch Distinguished Research Chair in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. He has been a professor of communication studies, an adjunct professor of psychology, and a former Dean's Administrative Fellow and is now Chair of the Rhetoric Department. He has taught interpersonal communication courses, mostly on relationships but also on nonverbal communication, communication in everyday life, construction of identity, communication theory, organizational leadership, and procedures and practices for leaders. More recently, he has taught composition, speaking, and rhetoric, especially for STEM students. By training an interdisciplinary thinker, Steve has focused on the development and decline of relationships, although he has also done research on the dynamics of television production techniques and persuasive messages in health contexts. Steve has written or edited 60 books on relationships and other matters and was the founder and, for the first 15 years, the editor of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. His book Meaningful Relationships: Talking, Sense, and Relating won the G. R. Miller Book Award from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication Association. Steve cofounded a series of international conferences on personal relationships. He won the University of Iowa's first Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award in 2001 and the National Communication Association's Robert J. Kibler Memorial Award in 2004 for "dedication to excellence, commitment to the profession, concern for others, vision of what could be, acceptance of diversity, and forthrightness." He was the 2010 recipient of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Helen Kechriotis Nelson Teaching Award for a lifetime of excellence in teaching, and in the same year was elected one of the National Communication Association's Distinguished Scholars. He received the NCA's 2019 Mark L. Knapp Award in Interpersonal Communication for career contributions to the study of interpersonal communication. He hopes to make it to the Iowa State Fair one day.
Julia T. Wood (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is Professor of Communication Studies and Lineberger Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She teaches and conducts research on personal relationships, intimate partner violence, feminist theory, and the intersections of gender, communication, and culture. She has authored or edited 23 books, including Who Cares?: Women, Care and Culture, and Gendered Lives, now in its 7th edition. In addition, she has published more than 70 articles and book chapters. During her career she has received 12 awards for scholarship and 11 for teaching.
