John Gennari

BIO

John Gennari is Professor of English and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. He is an American Studies-trained cultural historian (A.B. Harvard, PhD. University of Pennsylvania) who has held fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard, and the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia. Gennari’s latest book, The Jazz Barn: Music Inn, the Berkshires, and the Place of Jazz in American Life (2025) is published by Brandeis University Press. His earlier book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America at Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), is a study of Black/Italian cultural intersections in music and vernacular soundscapes, foodways, sports, and other forms of expressive culture. His first book, Blowin’ Hot and Cool: Jazz and Its Critics (University of Chicago Press, 2006), won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Criticism and the John G. Cawelti Award for Best Book in American Culture Studies. Gennari currently is working on BlackItalian, a documentary film based on the themes explored in Flavor and Soul.

Courses

• Jazz and the Cultural Imagination
• Race as Social Fact and Fiction
• BlackItalian
• Rock/Pop and 1960s/70s America
• Writing about the Arts

Publications

John Gennari Publications (PDF)

Awards and Achievements

• University of Vermont, College of Arts and Sciences, Dean’s Lecture Award, Spring 2008
• ASCAP-Deems Taylor Prize for Excellence in Music Criticism, 2007
• John G. Cawelti Award for the Best Book in American Culture Studies, 2007
• Tim Shiner Ally Award (“for strong commitment to work within the UVM ALANA community in an effort to create social change”), 2007
• UVM Women’s Center Outstanding Ally Award (“for your significant contribution to feminist and anti-sexist activism on the campus”), 2007.