Josh Kun

Josh Kun is a Grammy-nominated cultural historian, curator, and author. He is the inaugural Vice Provost for the Arts at USC where he is Professor and Chair in Cross-Cultural Communication in the USC Annenberg School. His books include Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (2005), 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, 2008), Songs in the Key of Los Angeles (2013), To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City (2015), The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles (2017), Double Vision: The Photography of George Rodriguez (2019), and others. As a curator and artist, his projects have appeared with Getty, Prospect New Orleans, Steve Turner Gallery, The Huntington, Grammy Museum, SFMOMA, California African American Museum, the Los Angeles Public Library, and more. He was a co-founder of the record label Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, which produced a series of musical re-issue projects that aimed to investigate, and expand, the history of Jewish-American music. He has been the recipient of a Berlin Prize, an American Book Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently writing a book on music and migration in the 21st century.