Communicating Intimate Health

(Hardback)

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Description

Communicating Intimate Health presents an edited collection of original, empirical research, personal essays, autoethnography, critical reviews, and theoretical work showcasing advances in intimate health research from the field of communication studies. Intimate health includes sexual and reproductive health, sexual activity, sexuality, gender, and reproductive justice. The contributors vulnerably engage subjects including: parent-child, partner, patient-provider, and larger societal discourse and communication about sexuality education, HIV, family planning, purity pledges, (in)fertility, breastfeeding, and Black maternal health, sexting, boundary setting, consent, border justice, trauma, contraception, and menstruation, among others. Featuring both new research and vulnerable reflections on the research process, Communicating Intimate Health showcases the potential of communication scholarship to engage intimately with intimate topics.

Reviews

"At a time when people throughout the world are coming to embrace and understand intersectional gender identities like never before Communicating Intimate Health provides a refreshingly brilliant collection of essays that extend our thinking beyond what we ever knew possible. This is a book any scholar committed to gender justice will want to add to their libraries."

--Ronald L. Jackson II, Author of Scripting the Black Masculine Body

"Communicating Intimate Health involves vulnerable selves, both those who choose to be vulnerable and those made vulnerable by others. As revealed across chapters, for some selves their vulnerability is a vehicle for connection and growth and for others it is exploited. Authors, too, embrace vulnerability in the pursuit of knowledge and social justice. In explorations of sexual consent and sexual education, breastfeeding, infertility, and queer healthcare, this edited book engages common communication challenges around intimate health and models how to disrupt the stigma and shame that accompany silence and distorted communication. Collectively, authors illuminate forces that marginalize, including systemic racism and heteronormativity, and elevate voices and experiences too often unacknowledged. Cooke-Jackson and Rubinsky have edited a timely and necessary volume for students and scholars of interpersonal and health communication as well as those working on the frontlines of healthcare. Communicating Intimate Health is a must-read book that unsettles stagnant scripts and encourages expanded possibilities."

--Lynn Harter, Ohio University

"Drs. Cooke-Jackson and Rubinsky provide a diligently researched and deeply considered approach to one of life's most interesting and complex topics: intimate health. This text provides a solid background to the most cutting-edge research in this area, focusing on communication theories and application, all the while offering a creative and evocative format that engages the reader. This remarkable book is an astute, insightful read, sure to be enjoyed by academics and lay readers alike."

--Carey Marie Noland, Northeastern University

"This is a first. This important book is the first to bring together the emerging work on issues of intimate communication as they relate to health. Both interpersonal and health communication scholars will find this work of great value. The contributions are unique and insightful. The issues identified in the various chapters are difficult to discuss and to study, even though they are of great significance. The authors have brought together personal insight and valuable research and theory. I look forward to the future contributions to scholarship that I am confident we will see as a consequence of the publication of this influential volume."

--Teri Thompson, Editor of Health Communication

Author Bio

Angela F. Cooke-Jackson is associate professor of health communication and behavioral science at California State University, Los Angeles, and co-director of the Intimate Communication Lab.

Valerie Rubinsky is assistant professor of communication at the University of Maine at Augusta and co-director of the Intimate Communication Lab.