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 and B.A. in History from Columbia University. Dr. Berish’s current research focuses on the relationship between musical expression and the social experience of space and place. His current book, Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams: Place, Mobility, and Race in Jazz of the 1930s and ’40s(University of Chicago Press, 2012), examines the ways swing-era jazz represented the geographic and demographic transformations of American life during the Great Depression and Second World War. He has published articles on 1930s “sweet” jazz and guitarist Django Reinhardt in The Journal of the Society for American Music and Jazz Perspectives. A recent essay on Duke Ellington in the 1930s appears in the Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington , edited by Ed Green (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is currently at work on a study of Tin Pan Alley song during the Depression and Second World War as well as a second project on jazz hating. His research interests include topics in jazz and American popular music, theories of space and place, and ideologies of 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
“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,” McSweeny’s
Contact & Social Media
https://www.facebook.com/aberish203
Research, Writing, and Teaching 