In Memoriam: Dr Vincent Mosco

Vincent Mosco was a foundational figure in critical communication studies, a builder of progressive scholarly institutions in the field, an ally to social justice movements within and beyond the academy, and a generous mentor to dozens of communication scholars over several decades.He achieved all of this while never forgetting where he came from-a tenement on Mulberry Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side.When Mosco entered graduate school in the 1960s, the nascent field of communication studies was dominated by positivist sociological and psychology approaches and industry-serving audience research.For the cohort of critical communication scholars coming onto the scene at that time in North America, there were precious few supportive scholarly journals to publish in, conferences to present research at, or departments to find work in, making professional advancement difficult even as undergraduate students of the era increasingly clamoured for critical analysis of the mass media.Along with women's studies, Black studies, cultural studies, and other traditions emerging alongside the great wave of social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, critical communication studies was a minor current of scholarship that had yet to establish a solid institutional foundation in the academy.That Mosco was one of the key figures who turned critical communication research into a thriving and diverse component of the contemporary scholarly landscape was in and of itself a remarkable accomplishment, but how he went about this project, in the face of very long socio-economic odds, says just as much about him and perhaps more.The child of southern Italian immigrants who grew up in Brophy, Enda.