Communicating Hope

Christine S. Davis is Professor in the Communication Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is a critical narrative ethnographer and autoethnographer who experiments with method and form, and publishes regularly on topics such as qualitative research methods, children’s mental health, end-of-life communication, and family disability.

• Chapter 1: Rigging and LaunchingChapter 2: S.S. Titanic Chapter 3: Abandon All HopeChapter 4: Appearances are DeceivingChapter 5: Union Gives StrengthChapter 6: All Things are Possible Chapter 7: Team VoiceChapter 8: Blended Voices Chapter 9: Children’s Mental Health Practice Considerations

"Written with compassion and insight, Cris Davis’s latest book introduces readers to a phenomenon that is truly on the margins of our social consciousness despite its prevalence—the experiences of families and their children with severe emotional disturbance. As a diligent and rigorous ethnographic study, Communicating Hope illustrates the power of social construction as both a metatheoretical concept and a powerful tool that helps the 'system of care' to resist dominant medical models that disempower families and children. I highly recommend this text for scholars and teachers of health, education, or communication and for professionals working closely with distressed children and families."- Elissa Foster, Associate Professor, DePaul University, and author of Communicating at the End of Life: Finding Magic in the Mundane (Erlbaum, 2007)"Christine Davis offers a reflexive, raw, and achingly vulnerable account of the possibilities and challenges of a strengths-based and interdisciplinary approach to mental healthcare for children and adolescents. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Davis invites you into the lives of care providers and the families they serve. Few communication scholars do ethnography as well as Davis―her research is original, engaging, and useful. Indeed, she communicates hope in the midst of vulnerability." - Lynn M. Harter, School of Communication Studies, Ohio University