Associate Professor of communication and journalism
(Joint appointment in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity)

Ph: 213 821 4325
Office: ASC 321C
jkun@usc.edu
Josh Kun

/images/faculty/joshkun_audiotopia.jpgProfessor Kun's 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. He is 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.

Prior to joining the USC Annenberg school, Kun was Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. He holds a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. A former Arts Writers Fellow with The Sundance Institute and a former fellow of the Ucross Foundation and The Mesa Refuge, he is the author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (UC Press) which won a 2006 American Book Award. He is co-author of And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past As Told By The Records We've Loved and Lost (Crown, 2008), and wrote the introduction to the re-publication of Papa, Play For Me (Wesleyan University Press), the autobiography of musical comedian Mickey Katz.  

/images/faculty/joshkun_audiotopia.jpgHis articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals and anthologies, covering everything from the sound worlds of the Mexican border and the lost histories of Jewish mambo and Jewish jazz, to African-American and Latina/o musical exchange in Los Angeles.  

In 2005, he co-founded The Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, a non-profit organization dedicated to excavating lost treasures of Jewish-American music. The Society re-issues classic albums and the stories behind them; manages a digital based archive of the music and the artists who created it in order to preserve their legacy for future generations; curates museum exhibits like Jews on Vinyl and Black Sabbath that showcase the stories behind the music, and organize concerts which bring the 80 and 90 year old performers back on stage before a young audience at venues like Lincoln Center in New York, Skirball in Los Angeles and Yoshi’s in San Francisco.

As a critic and journalist, Kun is a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Los Angeles Magazine. From 1998-2006, he wrote "Frequencies," a bi-weekly music column published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Boston Phoenix. His writing has also appeared in Tu Ciudad Los Angeles, Cabinet, LA Weekly, The Believer, Guilt & Pleasure, Village Voice, SPIN, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, and in Mexico's La Jornada and Proceso. He has written the liner notes to CDs by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Maldita Vecindad, and Sammy Davis Jr.

His journalism on the US-Mexico border earned him a 2007 Unity Award in Media and made him a finalist for a 2007 Southern California Journalism Award.

/images/faculty/joshkun_audiotopia.jpgIn 2005, Kun was a regular critic on The Movie Show With John Ridley on American Movie Classics, and he has also appeared as a culture critic on ABC, The Disney Channel, National Geographic TV, UPN, Fox Latin America, BBC Radio, and National Public Radio. From 1999-2000, he hosted The Red Zone, Southern California's first commercial Latin Rock radio program, on 107.1 FM and in 2002 was the show's host on MTV-español. From 2003-2005, he hosted and associate produced Rokamole, a weekly Latin alternative music video show on KJLA-LATV.

He 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.



Publications

Books

2011 Re-Assembling Tijuana: The Border City in the Age of Globalization. Editor with Fiamma Montezemolo. Duke University Press.

2011 The Song Is Not The Same: Jews and American Popular Music. The Jewish Role in American Life Vol. 7. Annual Volume of The USC Casden Institute. Editor. Purdue University Press.

2011 Black and Brown Los Angeles: A Contemporary Reader. Editor with Laura Pulido. University of California Press.

2011 Special Issue on Sound: American Quarterly. Editor with Kara Keeling. John Hopkins University Press.

2008 And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past As Told by The Records We Have Loved and Lost. Co-authored with Roger Bennett. Random House, 2008.

2005 Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America. Winner of the 2006 American Book Award. UC Press 2005.

Select Articles/Essays/Journalism

2011  “Playing the Fence, Listening to the Line: Sound, Sound Art, and Acoustic Politics at the US-Mexico Border.” Performance in the Borderlands: A Critical Anthology. eds. Harvey Young and Ramon Rivera-Servera. Palgrave.

2011  “The Tijuana Sound: Blues, Brass, and the Musical Borders of the 1960s.” Transnational Encounters: Music and Performance at the U.S.-Mexico Border. Ed. Alejandro Madrid. Oxford University Press.

2011 "California Sueños." Boom: A Journal of California Studies. Issue 1, Volume 1. UC Press.

2011 "The Sound of ’68: Notes on The Musical Legacy of Tlateloco." Kalfou. Special journal issue, "1968." University of Minnesota Press.

2010 "Black Sabbath." Liner notes essay. Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical HIstory of Black-Jewish Relations. Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation.

2010 "Unexpected Harmony: YouTube Helps Legaci's Breakout." The New York Times. June 15, 2010.

2010 "El Disco Es Cultura." The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl. Ed. Trevor Schoonmaker. Duke University Press, 

2010 "Tijuana and the Borders of Race." The Blackwell Companion to Los Angeles. Eds. William Deverell and Greg Hise. Blackwell.

2009 “Have An Hors D’ Ouevrey Irvy: The Music of Jewish-American Food.” Koscher & Co. Exhibition Catalog. Judisches Museum Berlin. 

2009 "The Sound of the Desert Sublime." Convergence: Special Issue on "The Sonic West." Ed. Stephen Aron. Autry National Center.

2009 "Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos." Liner notes essay. Juan Calle and HIs Lantzmen, Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos. Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation. 

2009 "Mexican Bands Find Success Via Cell Phones." The New York Times. April 3, 2009.

2008 A Line in the Sand: The Contemporary US-Mexico Border and Its Future. Los Angeles Times. February 17, 2008.

2008 "Immigrant Sage: How a 70-year-old curmudgeon, played by a 28-year-old, became one of the most popular personalities on L.A. radio." Los Angeles Magazine. December 2008.

2007. "Abie the Fishman: On Masks, Birthmarks, and Hunchbacks. In E. Weisbard (Ed.), Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.

2007 "How We Listen: A Conversation Between Josh Kun and Leon Botstein." Guilt & Pleasure, 6.

2007 "Interview with Jorge Hernández of Los Tigres del Norte." Bomb: A quarterly arts & culture magazine.

2007 "The Latte-ization of Tijuana." Los Angeles Times, August 6 2007.

2007 "The Ballad of Music Man Murray." Los Angeles Magazine, July 2007.

2007. "Mexico City's Indie Rock, Now Playing to the World." New York Times. May 13, 2007.

2006 "The New Sound of Mexico, Sung in a Nashville Accent." New York Times. December 17, 2006.

2006. "We Are a Band, and We Play One on TV." New York Times. July 9, 2006.

2006 "The Twiins: Mexican Music, Made in America." New York Times. May 14, 2006.

2006 "They're With the Band, Speaking That Global Lanage: Brass." New York Times. April 9 2006.

2006 "The Island of Jorge Hank Rhon." LA Weekly. February 16, 2006.

2005 "Bagels, Bongos, and Yiddishe Mambos, or The Other History of Jews in America." Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 23(4).

2004 "File under: Post-Mexico." Aztlan, 29(1).

2002 "Two Turntables and a Social Movement: Writing Hip-Hop at Century's End." American Literary History, 14(3)

2002 “'The Sun Never Sets on MTV: Tijuana NO! and the Border of Music Video." Latino/a Popular Culture. eds. M. Romero & M. Habell-Pallan. NYU Press.

2001 "The Aural Border." Theatre Journal, 52.

Exhibitions

2010 Black Sabbath: The Music of Blacks and Jews. Co-curator. Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. 

2009 Jews on Vinyl. Co-curator. Contemporary Jewish Museum (S.F.) & Skirball Cultural Center (L.A.)

2009 Last Exit USA. Solo installation. Steve Turner Contemporary. Los Angeles, CA.

News

July 2, 2008: Kun receives Casden Grant to produce groundbreaking musical study
Feb. 19, 2008: Kun writes in LA Times that border issues are a political quagmire
Oct. 26, 2007: Smith and Kun win 2007 USC research grants
Aug. 3, 2007: Dublab members named inaugural residents of Popular Music Project's LA Residency Program

CommLine Online headlines:
May 12, 2010: Kun's exhibit "Jews on Vinyl" opens at Skirball Cultural Center
April 28, 2010: Kun gives lecture on "The Music of Black-Jewish Relations"
April 14, 2010: Kun featured on CBS, CNN; participates in The Festival of International Books and Arts 2010
February 17, 2010: Kun serves on panel at Council of American Jewish Museums annual conference
February 4, 2010: Kun hosts creators of new PBS musical magazine series , Kun delivers talks at UC Santa Barbara, Joshua Tree, UCLA Center for Jewish Studies
January 21, 2010: Kun named to the editorial board of UC Press journal