Summer at the Library: Friendship Matters: Benefits and Challenges of a Unique Human Connection

In this presentation Bill Rawlins will discuss and illustrate distinctive features and challenges of communicating in friendships in personal and public contexts. He will highlight inherent tensions that all friends face across the life course and interconnections of personal and political friendships. Recognizing the importance of this topic to all attending, there will be time allotted for questions and personal examples from audience members.

Presenter bio:

William K. “Bill” Rawlins is the Stocker Professor Emeritus in the School of
Communication Studies at Ohio University. He has published extensively about the
unique challenges and dialectical tensions of communicating in friendships across the life
course. His research addresses the role of friendships in accomplishing the well-lived life
for individuals and communities, and the role of dialogue and narrative in co-authoring
viable and edifying identities with others. His book, The Compass of Friendship:
Narratives, Identities, and Dialogues (2009), received the Gerald R. Miller Book Award
for 2012 from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the National Communication
Association, and the 2009 David R. Maines Narrative Research Award from the Carl
Couch Center for Social and Internet Research. His book, Friendship Matters:
Communication, Dialectics, and the Life Course (1992), was selected as an Outstanding
Academic Book for 1993 by the editors of Choice, and received the Gerald R. Miller
Book Award in 1994 from the Interpersonal and Small Group Interaction Division of the
National Communication Association.