Dr. Tony Adams is Caterpillar Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Bradley University. Before Bradley, he worked at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU). At NEIU, he served as the Director of Graduate Studies (2011-2014) and as the Chair of the Department of Communication, Media and Theatre (2014-2017). In 2017, he was honored to be named the Bernard J. Brommel Distinguished Research Professor, the highest research award at NEIU; in 2021, he was honored to be named a Caterpillar Professor, the highest research award at Bradley.

Much of Dr. Adams’s research focuses on sexual diversity and queer concerns such as stigma, social support, and self-disclosure. In his first book, Narrating the Closet (Routledge), he identified struggles with disclosing same-gender attraction—often referred to as “coming out (of the closet).” He described experiences of sexuality before, during, and after coming out, as well as demonstrated how the coming out process often never ends as every new audience makes for a new time to disclose one’s likes and desires. In subsequent projects, he has focused on forgiveness and sexuality by investigating how queer folks live with others who have committed homophobic and transphobic slights.

In addition to this research, Dr. Adams has prioritized building the interdisciplinary and international infrastructure for autoethnography, a method that merges the practices of life writing with the practices of ethnography. Underlying all of his work is a commitment to identifying injustices, challenging harmful norms, and improving relationships.

Dr. Adams has written four books and edited six books, and his writing has been translated from English to Spanish, German, Greek, and Japanese. He is a co-editor of the Writing Lives: Ethnographic Narratives book series (Routledge) and founding co-editor of the Journal of Autoethnography (University of California Press).

Dr. Adams is a first-generation college student. He received his A.S. (Business Administration) from Danville Area Community College, a B.A. (Radio-Television) and a M.S. (Speech Communication) from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and a Ph.D. (Communication) from the University of South Florida. He attended Catholic school for his early education, worked as a bartender at Yellowstone National Park, has played softball for many years, and has been a vegetarian since 1998.

Contact Information

Tony E. Adams, Ph.D. (he/they)
Caterpillar Professor and Chair
Department of Communication | Bradley University
1501 W. Bradley Ave., CGCC 300 | Peoria, Illinois 61625
tony.e.adams@gmail.com

Curriculum Vita (February 2024)