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FAMILY COMMUNICATION DIVISION NEWSLETTER
Volume 6	Fall-Winter 1996	Number 2

San Diego!!! Ahhh, the sound of the surf, the smell of the fresh ocean breeze, and the warming California sun. What more could anyone want? How about a couple of hundred family scholars engaged in intellectual discussion, collegial fellowship, and witty repartee! It always seems too long that we are apart as a group, but I have good things to report since I last wrote.

By the time you receive this newsletter, the Family Communication Web page should be operational, allowing for SCA members to quickly access information about the Family Division membership, such as, current research interests and mentoring requests. This web page should help keep our division connected between conventions. Special thanks to Sherilyn Ferguson, H. Paul LeBlanc III, and Ted Spencer for all their hard work with this. Our home page is accessed through SCA at http://www.scassn.org/. Currently we have over fifty entries on the web page and we encourage those of you who have not submitted your information to do so.

Besides the web page, the Bernard J. Brommel Award for Outstanding Scholarship or Distinguished Service in Family Communication has been approved by SCA, and as such, a selection committee will soon be put in place to facilitate nomination and selection processes. This award is intended to recognize published research and creative scholarship, or outstanding leadership and promotion of family communication. Thanks to Bernard Brommel for his continued commitment to the Family Communication Division.

Unique to the San Diego convention, the Family Communication Division is sponsoring a panel entitled "Family Communication Research in Progress: Dialogue on Specific Projects." This panel is intended to provide a format in which individuals with "in process" work can dialogue, in roundtable sessions, with established scholars regarding that area of study. This panel is ideal for individuals who are branching into areas that are new for them in terms of content and/or research methods. In addition, graduate students or individuals new to the family communication area are especially encouraged to submit their work. For information how to submit an "in process" piece, please see the article "Attention Family Communication Researchers!" by Nancy Buerkel-Rothfuss in this Issue.

We are also organizing an informal gathering of the division around the Marriott pool on Monday at 2:00. This is intended to be a time for networking with your colleagues as well as an opportunity for graduate students to sit down and chat with those of us who are typically hard to catch between panels.

I am looking forward to San Diego with great anticipation and know that those of you who can come will support the Division as much as possible. For those of you can't make it this Fall, you don't have to miss out. Make sure you access our web page, and write, e-mail, or reach out and touch someone (kind of a catchy phrase, don't you think?) to keep dialogue about communication in the family alive all year long.

ATTENTION FAMILY COMMUNICATION RESEARCHERS! The FCD is hosting a special session for you to discuss work in progress, share ideas, network, and generally advance family communication research. This session (12:30-1:45pm on Saturday) should be of interest to veteran family researchers and newcomers alike. If you would like to present your work, send a one-to-two-page description of your project to: Nancy Buerkel-Rothfuss, Department of Speech Communication and Dramatic Arts, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant MI 48859 by October 15. You may fax your proposal to (517)772-5691 or send e-mail to 34LTXF2@cmich.edu. All participants will be listed on a special flyer to be distributed at the session, and if needed, will receive a letter verifying their participation. THIS WILL BE AN INTERACTIVE SESSION! Bring your ideas, not your completed work. See you In San Diego!

The Family Communication Division encourages innovative approaches to the study of communication in marriages and families, soliciting submission of completed papers or proposals from members of all SCA sections and divisions. Theoretical, empirical, methodological and pedagogical approaches are all welcome. Papers and proposals will receive a blind review. Papers should be typed, double-spaced, article-length, written to conceal authorship and institutional affiliation, and include a 50-75 word abstract. Papers must include a separate cover page containing authors name(s) and affiliation(s); student or debut papers should be labeled in the upper right corner. Proposals for programs should use the SCA form for submitting programs, which includes (1) a program title, (2) a rationale for the program, (3) abstracts of papers or materials to be presented, (4) name, address and phone/e-mail address for each participant and (5) a statement of commitment that all participants will attend the conference if the proposal is accepted. Five copies of all papers and program proposals must be received by February 1, 1997. Send to: Cynthia Burggraf, Dept. of Communication, College of Wooster, 203 Wishart Hall, Wooster OH 44691; (330) 263-2058 (o); e-mail: cburggraf@acs.wooster.edu.

Congratulations to Marilyn Fuss-Reineck for receiving the 1995 Best Dissertation Award from the Family Firm Institute for her dissertation, "Home to Business and Business to Home: Role Carryover Between Spouses in Family Businesses."

An examination of some of our major communication journals yielded the following list of family communication research articles for 1995. If you published in family communication during 1995, please let the FCD Secretary know where and when (Sherilyn Ferguson, 970/351-2738). This information will be printed in our next newsletter, along with those family communication research articles published in 1996.

• Communication Quarterly. Vol. 43.
  No. 1, Winter 1995.
  
  "Couples' Affective Orientations and Their Verbal Abusiveness." Paul Yelsma.
  
  No. 2, Spring 1995.
  
  "The Father-Young Adult Relationship: Interpersonal Motives, Self-Disclosure, and Satisfaction." Matthew M. Martin and Carolyn M. Anderson.
  "Communication Network Activity: Network Attributes of the Young and Elderly." Brian R. Patterson.
  
  No. 3, Summer 1995.
  
  "Stability of College Students' Implicit Theories of Marriage." Charles Pavitt, Elizabeth M. Perse, and Cynthia S. Burggraf.
  "Some Things are Better Left Unsaid: Topic Avoidance in Family Relationships." Laura K. Guerro and Walid A. Afifi.

• Communication Monographs. Vol. 62, no. 3, September 1995.
  
  "Communication and the Experience of Dialectical Tensions in Family Life: An Examination of Abusive and Nonabusive Families." Teresa Chandler Sabourin and Glen H. Stamp.

• Women's Studies in Communication. Vol. 18, no. 2, Fall 1995.
  
  "Mothers as Others: The Construction of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Self-Help Literature of the 1940s." Julie H. Weiss.

• Western Journal of Speech Communication. Vol. 59, no. 3, Summer 1995.
  
  "Perceptions of Deception, Divorce, Disclosures, and Communication Satisfaction with Parents." Candice E. Thomas, Melanie Booth-Butterfield, and Steve Booth-Butterfield.

• Journal of Applied Communication Research. Vol. 23, no. 4, November 1995.
  (Special Issue: Applied Communication in Families.)
  
  "Applied Family Communication Research: Casting Light Upon the Demon." Gail Whitchurch and Lynn M. Webb.
  "An lntergenerational Case Study of Suicidal Tradition and Mother-Daughter Communication." Michelle Miller.
  "The Role of Negativity Reciprocity in Spouse Abuse: A Relational Control Analysis." Teresa Chandler Sabourin.
  "Accounting for Violence: An Analysis of Male Spousal Abuse." Glen H. Stamp and Teresa Chandler Sabourin.
  "Children's Expectations of Their Single Parents' Dating Behavior: A Preliminary Investigation of Emergent Themes Relevant to Single Parent Dating." Sherilyn Marrow Ferguson and Fran C. Dickson.