Writing the book on jealousy earns communications professor top award

“The Communication of Jealousy” by Jennifer L. Bevan, Ph.D., associate professor in Chapman University’s Department of Communication Studies, has won the prestigious 2014 National Communication Association (NCA) Diamond Anniversary Book Award, a discipline-wide award that is given by the association to what it considers the most outstanding scholarly book published in the last two years.

This is Bevan’s first book, written during a university-awarded sabbatical in spring 2012. It was published as part of the Language as Social Action series from Peter Lang Publishing Group. The book examines, integrates and informs research on jealousy experience and expression. To date, no other academic book has considered jealousy primarily from an interpersonal communication perspective; in doing so, Bevan’s book effectively connects jealousy research from related academic disciplines and develops a theory that advances the state of jealousy expression research.

The book has won two other top awards in the field, including: the 2014 Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Book Award from the Interpersonal Communication Division of the NCA (the highest honor that an interpersonal communication book can receive in the communication discipline) and the 2013 Distinguished Book Award from the Communication and Social Cognition Division of the National Communication Association.

Bevan’s research at Chapman examines difficult interactions such as jealousy, serial arguments, uncertainty and distance caregiving. She has published more than 35 articles in such journals as Communication Monographs, Human Communication Research, and Communication Research. She directs Chapman’s Master of Science program in Health and Strategic Communication, and is the editor-elect of the journal Communication Reports.

The National Communication Association is the nation’s oldest and largest professional association of communications scholars, teachers and practicioners.