Matthew B. Karush
Associate Professor
World History: Modern Latin American history: twentieth-century Argentina, cultural history
Matt Karush is Associate Professor of History. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1997. Karush is an expert on the history of modern Argentina and has published extensively on labor politics and on mass culture. His new book is Culture of Class: Radio and Cinema in the Making of a Divided Argentina, 1920-1946 (Duke University Press, 2012). Karush is also co-editor of The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power & Identity in Mid-Twentieth Century Argentina (Duke University Press, 2010). He is currently at work on a transnational history of Argentine popular music in the twentieth century.
Current Research
Selected Publications
Books:
Culture of Class: Radio and Cinema in the Making of a Divided Argentina, 1920-1946 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).
The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power & Identity in Mid-Twentieth Century Argentina (Duke University Press, 2010) [edited with Oscar Chamosa]
Workers or Citizens: Democracy and Identity in Rosario, Argentina (1912-1930), Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002.
Selected Articles:
“Blackness in Argentina: Jazz, Tango and Race before Perón,” Past & Present 216 (August 2012), 215-45.
“Populism, Melodrama, and the Market: the Mass Cultural Origins of Peronism,” in Karush and Chamosa, eds., The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power & Identity in Mid-Twentieth Century Argentina, Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
“The Melodramatic Nation: Integration and Polarization in the Argentine Cinema of the 1930s,” Hispanic American Historical Review 87:2 (2007), 293-326.
“National Identity in the Sports Pages: Football and the Mass Media in 1920s Buenos Aires,” The Americas 60:1 (2003), 11-32.
“Workers, Citizens and the Argentine Nation: Party Politics and the Working Class in Rosario, 1912-1913,” Journal of Latin American Studies 31:3 (1999), 589-616.
Courses Taught
HIST 272: Intro to Modern Latin American History
HIST 364: Revolutions & Radical Politics in Latin America
HIST 367: History, Fiction & Film in Latin America
HIST 387: Topics in World History: Race & Nation in Latin America
HIST 510: Approaches to Modern World History
HIST 525/615: Popular Music in the Americas
Recent Presentations
“Black in Buenos Aires: The Transnational Career of Oscar Alemán,” presented to the Latin American Studies Association, San Francisco, May 2012.
“Rubios, Morochos, and Negros: Argentine Mass Culture and the Production of Racial Difference, 1930-1943,” presented to the American Historical Association, Boston, January 2011.
“Roots, Rhythm & Race: Blackness in Argentina’s Transnational Mass Culture of the 1930s,” presented to the Latin American Studies Association, Rio de Janeiro, June 2009.
“Envisioning the Future of Tango in the 1930s: Manzi, De Caro, and D’Arienzo,” presented at the Humanities Center, Harvard University, October 26-27, 2007.