Andrew S. Berish
Associate Professor, Humanities and Cultural Studies Department
PhD, Musicology
Bio
Andrew Berish is an Associate Professor who holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His book, Hating Jazz: A History of its Disparagement, Mockery, and Other Forms of Abuse will be published by the University of Chicago Press (March 2025). He is also the author of Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s (University of Chicago Press, 2012). His essay on Space and Place in jazz is part of the Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies (Routledge, 2019). He has published articles on singer Vaughn Monroe, 1930s “sweet” jazz, and guitarist Django Reinhardt (Modernism/Modernity, The Journal of the Society for American Music and Jazz Perspectives). An essay on Duke Ellington in the 1930s appears in the Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington, edited by Ed Green (Cambridge University Press, 2015). His research focuses topics in jazz and American popular music and their relationship issues of taste, aesthetics, and race. He teaches courses on American culture of the 1930s and ’40s, jazz and civil rights, the analysis of popular music, and the role of place and mobility in American historical experience.
Research & Writing
Books
Articles
” ‘Feel The Tears I Cried Today’: Barbra Streisand and the Sentimental Mode,” in Journal of the Society for American Music (forthcoming, vol. 19, no. 1, February 2025)
“Space and Place in Jazz,” in The Routledge Companion to Jazz Studies, eds. Nicholas Gebhardt, Nichole Rustin-Paschal, and Tony Whyton. New York: Routledge. (forthcoming) 153-162.
“ ‘The Baritone with Muscles in his Throat’: Vaughn Monroe and Masculine Sentimentality during the Second World War,” Modernism/modernity, Print Plus Volume 3, Cycle 2. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. <https://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0052>
“Duke Ellington in the 1930s,” in the Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington, ed. Edward Green. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
“Leisure, Love, and Dreams in Depression America: Duke Ellington and Tin Pan Alley Song,” Musical Quarterly 96 (Winter 2013): 339-368. “Music and the Great Depression,” and “Charlie Barnet,” in The Grove Dictionary of American Music, Second Edition, Charles Garrett, editor-in-chief. Oxford University Press, 2013.
“Space is Our Place: Trenton Doyle Hancock and Sun Ra,” Trenton Doyle Hancock. Tampa, FL: USF Contemporary Art Museum and Graphicstudio, 2012.
“Negotiating ‘A Blues Riff’: Listening for Django Reinhardt’s place in American Jazz,” Jazz Perspectives 3, no. 3, Routledge/Taylor & Francis (2009): 233-264.
“ ‘I Dream of Her and Avalon’: 1930s Sweet Jazz, Race and Nostalgia at the Casino Ballroom,” Journal of the Society for American Music 2, no. 4, Cambridge University Press (November 2008): 531-567.
Book Review in Music and Letters 84, no. 4 Oxford University Press (November 2003). A double review of Susan Fast’s Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music and Steve Waksman’s Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience.
Essays and Other Short Works
“Kate Smith and Our Minstrel Past,” Musicology Now
“Irony and Sincerity in a Time of Crisis: Sentimental Piety in The Robe,” Arcade
“To improve our university we must move massive amounts of human waste into your offices,” McSweeney’s
“I’m Your New FluffyScruffy And I Want You To Love Me!” Slackjaw (Medium)
“The World Cannot Abide Another Flute Podcast,” McSweeney’s
“Congratulations, Your Binder Has Earned Tenure,” McSweeney’s
“Our Faculty Success Initiative Redefines Everything You Thought You Knew About ‘Faculty’ and ‘Success’,” McSweeney’s
Contact & Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/aberish203
Research, Writing, and Teaching 