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Duke Alumnus Josh Kun Named 2016 MacArthur Fellow

Duke alumnus Josh Kun was one of 23 individuals who received MacArthur Grants Thursday, presented to scholars, artists and activists who break “new ground in areas of public concern, in the arts, and in the sciences, often in unexpected ways.”

Kun graduated from Duke in 1993 with a B.A. degree in literature. He currently is professor of communication at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where he is a cultural historian exploring the ways in which the arts and popular culture are conduits for cross-cultural exchange.

His writings have focused on the evolution of racial and ethnic identity in America. In “Audiotopia” (2006), he explores African American, Jewish American, Mexican American and Mexican popular music.  He is also co-author of “And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl” (2008), a close reading of more than 400 Jewish music album covers.

Kun has found a number of creative sources for cultural studies, including dining in Los Angeles, sheet music in the LA public library and music with Stevie Wonder and Jackson Browne. un has curated exhibitions and installations at such venues as the Getty Foundation, the Museum of Latin American Art, the Skirball Center, and the Grammy Museum, among others, and in 2005, he co-founded the Idelsohn Society for Musical Preservation, through which he has co-produced albums and organized several concerts of Jewish American music.

The award is also good news for Duke University Press. Kun is a co-editor of the press’ popular series “Refiguring American Music,” which publishes innovative works that pose new challenges to thinking about the nature and character of American music. He is also co-editor of “Tijuana Dreaming: Life and Art at the Global Border” (2012).

He has also written for Duke Press’s journal Public Culture.

In honoring Kun, the MacArthur Foundation said, “In work that spans academic scholarship, exhibitions, and performances, Kun unearths and brings to life forgotten historical narratives through finely grained analyses of material and sonic manifestations of popular culture.”

A second author for Duke Press also received a MacArthur Grant. Kellie Jones an art historian at Columbia University, is author of “EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art” (2011) and the forthcoming “South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s” (April 2017).