Communication in Everyday Life: A Survey of Communication

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, 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 co-founded 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 hopes to sit on the Iron Throne and be famous.

David T. McMahan has taught courses that span the discipline of communication, including numerous courses in interpersonal communication and personal relationships, media and technology, communication education, theory, and criticism. McMahan’s research interests also engage multiple areas of the discipline with much of his research devoted to bridging the study of relationships, technology, and media. This work encompasses discussions of media and technology in everyday communication, the incorporation of catchphrases and media references in everyday communication, and the relational aspects of the Internet and digital media.  His diverse research experiences also include studies on symbolic displays of masculinity and violence in rural America, media-based political transformations of the world’s nation-states, the reporting of mass-murder suicide in The New York Times, and primetime animated series. In addition to authoring numerous books, his work has appeared in such journals as Review of Communication, Communication Education, and Communication Quarterly, as well as edited volumes.  A tremendously-active member of the discipline, McMahan’s endeavors include serving on a number of editorial review boards, serving as editor of the Iowa Journal of Communication, and serving as president of the Central States Communication Association.  He has also received multiple awards for his work in the classroom and has been the recipient of a number of public service and academic distinctions, including being named a Centennial Scholar by the Eastern Communication Association. He hopes to someday win the singles championship at Wimbledon.