COMMUNICATION STUDIES AND THE REPERTOIRES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE

The works of over 75 communication scholars have consistently traced the markers of communication in African American life. There exists a complex and varied corpus that is necessarily interdisciplinary and multifarious in perspectives and context. The space(s) is theirs to define and, perhaps, to claim. Such studies may reward scholars most when they are nuanced with the kind of historical consciousness that gives way to analytical narratives and allows reflection on the moral accountabilities which telling such stories often produces. A nuanced historical narrative constructs African American life while remembering that both the past and the present are composites of equivocality, dubiety, ambiguity. The principal issue regarding Afrocentricity in African American communication studies is the degree to which Afrocentric perspectives advance the collection of stories and analyses that will allo