The study of human communication has been developing for as long as we have been concerned with the study of human beings. As a discipline, human communication studies has emerged from discipline specific focuses on speech communication and mass communication, journalism, radio and television broadcasting and public relations in the Western hemisphere. In the Anglophone Caribbean, much of the early formal academic work in communication was associated with mass communication and journalism. This early focus has developed into more recent emphases on media and communication, communication studies, communication for social and behavioural change, business communication, medical communication skills, health communication and, most recently, human communication studies. Using a narrative frame, this paper explores the historical and theoretical underpinnings of instructional programmes in communication at one university campus in the Anglophone Caribbean, analyzes the forces and influences on the study of communication studies, traces the discipline's developmental trajectories, and discusses the emergence of human communication studies as a discipline in the Caribbean.