Introduction
Barbara J. Jago is a program coordinator and associate professor of Communication Arts at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester where she teaches courses and conducts research in relational communication, with an emphasis on identity and emotion.
After receiving her Ph.D. in communication at the University of South Florida, Barbara joined the UNH Manchester faculty in 1998. In 2004, she was honored with the UNH Teaching Excellence Award.
The goal of Dr. Jago’s teaching and scholarship is to understand how human beings make sense of our selves and our relationships through storytelling, and how we can use that understanding to improve our individual and collective lives.
From this narrative perspective, the “self” evolves as a collection of multiple and often contradictory stories constructed through the processs of conversation in a variety of relational and cultural contexts. In this way, as M.C. Escher illustrates in “Bond of Love,” human identity is a fundamentally communicative, social, and political endeavor.