Malena Kuss

Malena Kuss is Professor Emeritus of Musicology, University of North Texas (1976‒99), and former Vice President of the International Musicological Society (2009‒17). She holds a Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from the University of California at Los Angeles (1976) and a M.M. in Piano Performance from Southern Methodist University (1964). Internationally recognized for her research on the music of Alberto Ginastera (1916‒83), with whom she studied composition for six years in Buenos Aires, Kuss has published extensively on opera in Latin America, oral and written musical traditions in comparative cultural contexts, and music historiography from a global perspective. She was elected Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society in 2017, and Corresponding Member of Argentinaʼs Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes in 2018. She is also the recipient of the Platinum Konex Award, which honors lifetime achievements in the arts in Argentina.

Building from compositional evidence as primary source, and drawing from landmarks of revisionist historiography and literary criticism to challenge epistemological scaffoldings anchored in paradigms of center and periphery and concomitant subalternity, her research centers on the poetics of subversion to confront “the imperialism of context” (González Echevarría). History and myth interact with the masterstory in Performing Beliefs (2004) and Performing the Caribbean Experience (2007), two books that involved contributions by more than a hundred scholars from thirty-six countries and place particular emphasis on music in social contexts and instruments as cultural artifacts. As Consulting Curator at the MIM/Phoenix, Kuss built a collection of over 1,500 instruments and designed forty-three exhibits (2008‒10).

Recognitions also include Individual Membership in the International Music Council (1999); the “Jesús C. Romero” Chair in Musicology sponsored by Mexicoʼs Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (1997); and Fulbright-Hays, NEH, ACLS, Mellon, and Paul Sacher Stiftung grants. An affinity with musicology as broadly defined coalesced in collaborations with the International Music Council associated with UNESCO (The Universe of Music: A His- tory, 1983‒97) and service to the International Musicological Society (2007‒17), the International Association of Music Libraries Archives, and Documentation Centres (Secretary, Bibliography Commission, 1984‒90), and the American Musicological Society (member and chair, Stevenson Award Committee, 2008‒09; 2018‒21; member and juror, AMS 50, 1996‒99).