Inside Relationships

Sandra L. Faulkner is professor of communication at Bowling Green State University where she writes, teaches, and researches about close relationships. Her interests include qualitative methodology, poetic inquiry, and the relationships among culture, identities, and sexualities in close relationships. Her research focuses on how individuals navigate gender and sexuality through interpersonal communication and personal narrative. She often uses poetry, creative nonfiction, and autoethnography to explore her own negotiation of identity as a parent, partner, and professor. She received the 2013 Knower Outstanding Article Award from the National Communication Association, the 2016 Norman K. Denzin Qualitative Research Award, and the 2020 Trujillo and Goodall "It’s a Way of Life Award" in Narrative Ethnography. https://www.sandrafaulkner.online/ https://bgsu.academia.edu/SandraFaulkner

Foreword: A Critical Need for Critical Case Studies in Interpersonal Communication Pedagogy by Jimmie Manning

Introduction by Sandra L. Faulkner

Chapter 1: What is a Relationship?

Case 1: The ruminating of the Samoan Va (relationships in-between) & the musing and connecting of identity by Fetaui Iosefo

Case 2: Migration Patterns by Kimberly Dark

Case 3: Wellspring by Sheila Squillante

Case 4: Death and the Childhood Imagination by Alana Ritt

Chapter 2: Health, Discourse, Dialectics, and Disclosure

Case 5: Run for their Lives: A Call to Action to Address Black Infant and Maternal Mortality by Erin K. Willer

Case 6: Primary Care by Mary E. Weems

Case 7: Letter to My 14-Year-Old Self by Walid Afifi, Rana M. Shubair, and Salsabeel Hamdan

Case 8: Cancer Triptych by Sandra L. Faulkner

Chapter 3: Families, Parenting, and Communication

Case 9: Life Isn’t All Roses: The Struggles of Adoptive Parenting by Christy Mesaros-Winckles and Andrew Winckles

Case 10: Formative Interactions and Reformative Patterns in Father-son Relationships and Masculinities by Dan S. Strasser

Case 11: A Capitalist and a Christian by Laura Stafford

Case 12: Healthy Happy Homes by Lindsey J. Thomas and Kristina M. Scharp

Chapter 4: The Social Self: Class, Race, and Social Context

Case 13: Black Motherhood: Poems by Nicole Danielle Morris

Case 14: Class and Calamity: In Hindsight by Kate Magsamen-Conrad

Case 15: Class (Inter)Acting by Tasha R. Dunn

Case 16: You Talk Like A White Girl: Blackgirl Identity and Interpersonal Interracial Realities by Robin M. Boylorn

Chapter 5: Race, Nationality, and Gendered Practices in Relationships

Case 17: Tales of Dashing Sasquatch: Skirting Gender Hegemony by Manda V. Hicks

Case 18: Sticks and Stones: Dealing with Discrimination by Lisa K. Hanasono

Case 19: How a board game prompted a conversation with my kids about what it means to be ‘American’ by Jenn McKee

Case 20: Stories of migration and identity from an undocumented citizen in the United States by Monica Cornejo

Chapter 6: Relationship Maintenance

Case 21: Long-Term Love by Laura L. Ellingson

Case 22: College students’ negotiations of work-life balance: Grasping it all in moments of turbulence by Katherine J. Denker and Kendra Knight

Case 23: Dis/connection by Zhenyu Tian and Keith Berry

Case 24: TEN: Marriage in 10 Scenes by Sandra L. Faulkner

Chapter 7: Sexualities and Heteropatriarchy

Case 25: Feminist Killjoy, Childfree by Choice by Bernadette Marie Calafell

Case 26: Does my beard make me look straight?—a series of messy strands by Lore/tta LeMaster

Case 27: The Trials of Coming Out as Trans by Shalen Lowell

Case 28: Learning, Living, and Leaving Monogamy by Tony E. Adams and Dominic A. Walker-Pecoraro

Chapter 8 The Dark Side

Case 29: Bowing Out of Friendship by Julia Galbus Kiesel

Case 30: That Baby Will Cost You: An Intended Ambivalent Pregnancy by Sandra L. Faulkner

Case 31: The Four Ugliest Children by Camille-Yvette Welsch

Case 32: Twintimacy and Twinships by Jordan A. Allen and Nicole T. Allen

Index

About the Authors