Josh Kun

Josh Kun in 2008

Josh Kun is an American author, academic and music critic. Kun is an Associate Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California.[1] He also holds a joint appointment at USC's Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. He is the director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's the Norman Lear Center and co-editor of the book series "Refiguring American Music" for Duke University Press.

Kun serves on the boards of Dublab, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and the Latin American Cinemateca, and on the editorial boards of American Quarterly, the International Journal of Communications, and The Journal of Popular Music Studies. He has also worked as a consultant and curator with The Los Angeles Public Library, Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Autry National Center, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art.[2]

Biography

Josh Kun graduated from University of California, Berkeley, with a Ph.D in Ethnic Studies. Prior to USC, he was an Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. His research focuses on the arts and politics of cultural connection, with an emphasis on popular music, the cultures of globalization, the US-Mexico border, and Jewish-American musical history.[3]

In 2005, he co-founded Reboot Stereophonic, a non-profit record label dedicated to excavating lost treasures of Jewish-American music. Reboot has been featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio.[4] He is also a co-founder of the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, which is named for Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, legendary Jewish musicologist and writer of the classic, "Hava Nagila." Idelsohn Society is committed to the belief that music creates conversations otherwise impossible in daily life. The Society's goal is to incite a new conversation about the present by listening anew to the past, focusing on stories of hybrid identities, eclectic communities, racial dialogue, and pioneering musical style, music that forces listeners to interrogate their own identities.[5]

Dr. Kun's October 2009 exhibit “Last Exit USA” at the Steve Turner Contemporary Gallery in Los Angeles, focused on popular music exchanges between Mexico and the U.S. in the 1960s, complete with 44 album covers and two listening stations. According to the Los Angeles Times review of the exhibit, “Listening to Kun’s selections is like visiting a world both familiar and strange, a sort of parallel universe that is disorienting, eye-opening, exciting.” [6]

As a critic and journalist, Kun is a regular contributor to The New York Times,[7] The Los Angeles Times,[8] Los Angeles Magazine,[9] VIBE, Tu Ciudad Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Boston Phoenix.[10][11]

Awards

Books

Exhibitions

Academic Publications

Journalism and Other Publications

Additional Links

References

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