Earl H. Brooks is a musician and Assistant Professor in the Department of English. He teaches courses in sound studies, African American rhetorical traditions, media literacy, rhetorical theory, and composition. His forthcoming book, On Rhetoric and Black Music (Wayne State University Press, African American Life Series, June 2024), examines how Black music functions as rhetoric, considering its subject not merely reflective of but central to African American public discourse. Brooks argues that there would have been no Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, or Black Arts Movement as we know these phenomena without Black music. Through rhetorical studies, archival research, and musical analysis, Brooks establishes the “sonic lexicon of Black music,” defined by a distinct constellation of sonic and auditory features that bridge cultural, linguistic, and political spheres with music. Genres of Black music such as blues and jazz are discursive fields, where swinging, improvisation, call-and-response, blue notes, and other musical idioms serve as rhetorical tools to articulate the feelings, emotions, and states of mind that have shaped African American cultural and political development. Examining the resounding artistry of iconic musicians such as Scott Joplin, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Mahalia Jackson, this work offers an alternative register in which these musicians and composers are heard as public intellectuals, consciously invested in crafting rhetorical projects they knew would influence the public sphere. Brooks’s work also appears in Sounding Out!, Rhetoric Review, Journal for the History of Rhetoric, Langston Hughes Review, and College Composition and Communication. Brooks is a recent winner of the College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS) Early Career Excellence Award and a recipient of the CAHSS Dean’s Research Fund, the Dresher Center Residential Faculty Research Fellowship, and the Humanities Teaching Lab Course Transformation Support Grant. Brooks is also a proud alumnus of the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, and he serves as a UMBC McNair Faculty Mentor and advisory board member. Brooks also serves on the executive board of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) as a representative of the CCCC Black Caucus.