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Building from a panel at the 2022 National Communication Association (NCA) annual convention, the present article seeks to ground communication studies/sciences as central to interdisciplinary conversations surrounding sexuality education and communication. Communication is integral to sexuality education, and topics of communication, sex, and sexuality education are researched across disciplines. Still, research on sexuality education within communication studies remains under-attended, and interdisciplinary sexuality education research remains siloed by academic discipline. Presenting a forum featuring both emerging and leading scholars in the field of communication researching sex(uality) education, the present article seeks to establish the academic discipline of communication as integral to research on sexuality education. To do so, we first discuss communication as an academic discipline and its advancements in sexuality education research. Next, communication scholars offer their expertise in sex(uality education) communication topics including family conversations, cultural influence, health inequities in education, and medicine. Collectively, these perspectives offer an understanding of current sexual health research in the field of communication, as well as next steps through direct application to conversations about sex, improvement to our medical and education systems, and community-based education and intervention. It is our hope that this article fosters a larger conversation about the importance of communication (studies/sciences) in sexuality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Learning Outcomes in Communication (LOC) grant project isolated and refined what communication majors should "know" and be able to "do." The LOC project was an opportunity to begin a conversation in the discipline about the breadth of personal and professional competencies taught in programs. The resulting LOCs are "not exhaustive or prescriptive" but rather a starting point for ongoing reflection and research on and within our programs (Kidd, 2015, p. 6). Thus, in this brief forum article, the authors suggest ongoing stakeholder research to explore, refine, and update the LOCs.

Genders and sexualities continue to remain underexplored in the field of communication studies and the academy in general. This essay examines possibilities for incorporating queer perspectives into communication studies. At the invitation of the Journal of Applied Communication Research editor, 9 communication scholars who use queer theory or queer perspectives in their own work responded to a series of questions addressing how queer theory and perspectives can be used in the discipline, both by those who are new to queer theorizing and those who are looking to expand their knowledge and practices. The answers to these questions provide an understanding of what queer theory is and its relationship with LGBT studies; allow practical considerations for incorporating queer perspectives into communication scholarship in multiple methodological areas; offer considerations for welcoming queer voices in the classroom, the communication discipline, and the larger academy; and indicate several scholarly resources for those who want to learn more about queer theory and LGBT studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the policing of sexual bodies via interactive online technologies. We draw from scholarly discourses regarding surveillance, queer theory, and affect to construct what we callinterpersonal panopticism. Interpersonal panopticism serves as a theoretical account of the fluid nature of watching and being watched in relationships, especially in consideration of how intimate relationships and sexualities are surveilled and controlled in a digital era. To articulate the utility and potentials of this theoretical approach, we offer five cultural propositions that serve as a basis for interpersonal panopticism. Collectively these propositions illustrate the utility and potentials of unpacking the interplay of surveillance, heteronormativity, and affect through an interpersonal panoptic lens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bonnie J. Dow and Julia T. Wood, Editors, The SAGE Handbook of Gender and Communication. Sage Publications, Inc., 2006. Reviewed by Jimmie Manning, Northern Kentucky University Studying sex, gender, and/or [...]

This research draws from multiadic interview data with 13 purity-pledge families to explore parental roles in sex education. The use of values coding reveals that participants present their beliefs in three ways: as research-oriented facts about sex and sexuality; as common-sense logic; and as informed by personal lived experience. These beliefs are both health- and relationship-oriented. Implications include how knowledge is selected and applied by parents in family talk about sex, gendered ways parents share sexual history, and problematic aspects of purity pledge talks. The study also adds to a larger cultural discourse regarding faith and the politics of science. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents abstracts related to gender including how men and women are instructed to use food rhetorically, the representation of gender and women in Mandarin Chinese, and marginalized mindset.

This essay explores some of the ways that interpersonal communication scholars can continue to integrate feminist approaches and perspectives into their research work. Topics include an overview of feminist approaches to communication research, the lack of feminist interpersonal communication research, and methods of engaging feminist interpersonal communication research.