
Jennifer L. Adams, Ph.D.

Jennifer L. Adams (Jen Adams PhD) is an award-winning communication educator with over twenty years of experience teaching people how to communicate with others professionally and personally. She is currently a Professor of Interpersonal Communication and Rhetoric at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where she teaches courses in relational communication and speech with a special interest in dialogue and letter writing. She is the author of a new book titled “An Autoethnography of Relationships Through Time: A Perfect Moon” about finding hundreds of love letters between a couple in the 1930s and the importance of letters in a digital world. As an advocate of the slow movement, she enjoys gardening and restoring the 1831 homestead she owns with her husband, Chad, as well as spending time with their family of dogs.
PUBLICATIONS
An Autoethnography of Letter Writing
and Relationships Through Time
Finding Our Perfect Moon
By Jennifer L. Adams
An Autoethnography of Letter Writing and Relationships Through Time: Finding Our Perfect Moon is about love letters, stories, and the ability of words to bring people together across time and physical space.
Weaving together edited and annotated letters between a young couple in the 1930s with interludes of autoethnographic reflection, the book relates the author’s experiences as she has negotiated this project over 20 years. Reading the letters is a sepia-toned window into the very private world of two young, well-educated Jewish-American people who lived their lives against the backdrop of the Jazz Age,
the Great Depression, and Prohibition. The author uses reflective autoethnographic interludes to tell the story of finding the letters and to explore the significance of letters as a communicative genre. Adams considers the ethical implications of being a researcher eavesdropping on private moments in others' lives, and she explores the function of dialogue in the development of the romantic relationship that unfolds in the letters and between the letters and her. The author also advocates for the everyday relational communication practices
that collectively comprise life's most important experiences.
Students and researchers interested in letter-writing, autoethnography, and relationship development will find relevance in this book.
It will also be of value to those interested in letter collections, the ethical implications of intimate research on people from the past who cannot offer consent, the role of nostalgia in interpersonal communication, and anyone who thrills at a love story told from primary documents from the past.



Lillian and Harry
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters
“Writing Others’ Stories: AutoethnographicReflections on Historical Research, Representation, and Bakhtin”
Journal of Autoethnography, 3 (2022): 4-18.
“Environmental Hospice and Memorial as Redemption:Public Rituals for Renewal,”
Western Journal of Communication, 84 (2020): 586-603.
“MovingBeyond Pragmatics: The Role of Dialogue in Studies of “Rhetoric In Situ,” in From Pragmatics to Dialogue edited by Edda Weigand (Routledge: 2018).
“Self Interest & Social Concerns,” in Language and Dialogue: A Handbook of Key Issues in the Field
edited by Edda Weigand (Routledge: 2017)
“Home as a Place of Protest: Scott and Helen Nearing and the Construction of the Modern American Homestead,” in StoryingHome: Place, Identity, and Exile
edited by Devika Chawla & Stacey Holman-Jones.(Lexington: 2015).
“Family Farms with Happy Cows: A Narrative Analysis of Packaging Labels on Horizon Organic Dairy Foods,” In Political Language of Food edited by S. Boerboom. (Lexington: 2015).
“Lafayette’s Trialof the Nineteenth Century: The Scandal, Rumor, & Politics of Mrs. Helen J.Gougar,” Traces:
Indiana History Magazine, Summer 2011.

Professor Adams has been teaching university students for over twenty years at a variety of institutions. Since 2004, she has taught at DePauw University, a selective top tier residential liberal arts college in Greencastle, Indiana. As a Professor of Communication Studies, she teaches courses with a focus on relationships, dialogue, narrative, and rhetoric studies. In 2010, she was awarded the United Methodist Exemplary Teaching Award, for "excellence in teaching; civility and concern for students and colleagues; commitment to value-centered education; and service to students, the institution and the community."
Recent Courses Offered:
• Public Speaking
• Foundations of Communication
• Private Communication: Letters, Journals, and Diaries
• Friendship in Life and Literature
PRESENTATIONS
Invited Public Lectures



“The Scott Nearing Trial for Sedition and Present Day
Suppression of Food Safety Information,”
Nearing Lyceum Speaker Series, Good Life Center in Harborside,
Maine, August 3, 2015.
“Scott Nearing and the University of Pennsylvania:
Tenure and Academic Freedom, Then and Now,”
Nearing Lyceum Speaker Series, Good Life Center in Harborside,
Maine, July 28, 2014.
​
“Early Writings of Scott Nearing on the Modern Homestead,”
Nearing Lyceum Speaker Series, Good Life Center in Harborside,
Maine, July 29, 2013.
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“Helen Gougar v. Timberlake: My Place is in the Voting Booth,”
sponsored by the Lafayette League of Women Voters & Indiana Supreme Court, Court History and Public Education in Lafayette, Indiana,
November 4, 2010.
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“Helen Gougar v. Timberlake: Arguments to the Court 9for CLE credit],” sponsored by the Indiana Supreme Court, Division of Court History and Public Education. Indiana Supreme Court, Indianapolis, Indiana,
November 3, 2009.
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“My Place is in the Voting Booth: A Play,”
sponsored by the Indiana Supreme Court, Court History
and Public Education and programmed by
“Spirit & Place Festival,” Indiana Supreme Court, Indianapolis,
November 10, 2009.
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“Yours Truly: Letter Writing Workshop,”
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago.
May 2, 2009.
For a complete list of past academic presentations, please refer to my Curriculum Vitae.
WORKSHOPS
Coming Soon!
"Sincerely Yours: A Personal-Letter Writing Workshop"
"I Hope This Letter Finds You Well:
Using Slow Communication for Digital Wellness"