Biography

Biography

Dr. Sven Kube is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary History. Born east of the Iron Curtain, he early in life grew fascinated with American popular culture. A vivid interest in music shaped his professional career, leading him first into journalism and then into academia. As a student of Cultural Studies, Literature, and Linguistics at Dresden University of Technology, he specialized in transatlantic relations and exchanges. Supported by two scholarships, he produced his Master’s thesis at Memorial University of Newfoundland, investigating how Canadian Content regulations for radio transformed domestic pop and rock. Subsequently, Kube completed a doctoral program in History at Florida International University in Miami. His forthcoming monograph illuminates how communist and capitalist music industries advanced cultural commerce across the Cold War divide. He has presented his work to a wide range of academic audiences, from the American Musicological Society to the Business History Conference. His publication “Shop of the Pops: Socialist Consumers, Capitalist Performers, and the Record Market That United Them” won the Popular Culture Association’s 2022 Russel B. Nye Award for the Outstanding Article of the Year. Kube joined Coastal Carolina University following a National Endowment for the Humanities research fellowship at Hagley Museum & Library. His next project traces the commodification of sensory experiences since the late twentieth century.  

Education

Ph.D., Florida International University, History, 2018.
B.A./M.A., Dresden University of Technology (Germany), Cultural Studies, 2007.

Teaching Areas

Popular Culture; Business and Technology; Cold War Era; Transatlantic Relations; United States, Europe, and World

Research Areas

Twentieth-Century Music and Film; Entertainment Industries; Commodification of Sensory Experiences; Transnational Processes; Communist–Capitalist Cooperation