Bedford Resident Earns Esteemed UNH Award

Editors note: I want to offer a personal and heartfelt congratulations to Barbara Jago, my favorite college professor at University of New Hampshire at Manchester, where I graduated in 2006.

Submitted by UNH Manchester:

Manchester, NH—Barbara Jago, Associate Professor of Communication Arts at the University of New Hampshire’s Manchester campus, has been named the 2013 UNH Kidder Award faculty recipient.

The University’s Kidder Award is presented annually to the faculty, staff members, and students whose outstanding efforts foster a greater understanding of sexual orientation.

Jago was recognized as a faculty leader for her longstanding commitment to educating her students and colleagues about gender identity and sexual orientation and for creating a safe and respectful forum to have conversations of sex, gender, and sexuality. As an example of her commitment, this spring she coordinated a Sidore Lecture Series titled “InQUEERY: Explorations of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality” with Adjunct Professor Mason Dunn, JD.  The series explores identity, aging, health, faith, and the law from a queer perspective.

Jago teaches courses and conducts research in relational communication, with an emphasis on identity and emotion. The goal of her teaching and scholarship is to understand how we as human beings make sense of ourselves and our relationships through storytelling, and how we can use that understanding to improve our individual and collective lives. Her work has been published in numerous journals. In 2011, Jago's most recent article, “Chasing Laurie: An autoethnographic short story” was published in the academic journal Qualitative Inquiry. Jago serves as a member of the NH State Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights.

After receiving her Ph.D. in communication at the University of South Florida, Jago joined the UNH Manchester faculty in 1998. In 2004, she was honored with the UNH Teaching Excellence Award. She currently lives in Bedford, NH.