Ronald L. Jackson II (Ph. D., Howard University) is Associate Professor of Culture and Communication Theory in the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. He is author of The Negotiation of Cultural Identitynbsp; (Praeger Press), Think About It! (Iuniverse.com), African American Communication: Identity and Culture (with Michael Hecht and Sidney Ribeau; Erlbaum Publishers).nbsp; Forthcoming are five books entitled: African American Rhetorics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (with Elaine Richardson; Southern Illinois University Press); Scripting the Black Masculine Body in Popular Media: Identity, Discourse and Racial Politics in Popular Media (SUNY… Press), Essential Readings in African American Communication Studies and Understanding African American Rhetoric (with Elaine Richardson).nbsp; Dr. Jackson's theory work includes the development of two paradigms coined "cultural contracts theory" and "black masculine identity theory." nbsp;
Ronald L. Jackson II is a professor of media and cinema studies and the head of the African American studies department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Murali Balaji is an assistant professor of mass communications and the director of the Mass Communications Center of Excellence at Lincoln University.