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Lisa Barg

Academic title(s): 

Associate Dean, Graduate Studies, Associate Professor (Sabbatical leave, Fall '24)

Lisa Barg
Department: 
Music Research
Area(s): 
Music History/Musicology
Contact Information
Phone: 
514-398-0542
514-398-4400 Ext 089665
Email address: 
graddirector.music [at] mcgill.ca
lisa.barg [at] mcgill.ca
Group: 
Faculty
Salutation: 
Professor
Degree(s): 

B.A. in Arts from Antioch College (1987), M.A. (1994) Music History from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Ph.D. (2001) Music History from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Areas of expertise: 

Jazz studies, feminist musicology, modernist histories, opera and music-theater, cultural theory, and collaboration.

Biography: 

Lisa Barg received her B.A. in Arts from Antioch College (1987), and her M.A. (1994) and Ph.D. (2001) in Music History from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is currently serving as the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies. Professor Barg is the Co-editor-In-Chief of Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture.

Professor Barg’s research centers issues of gender, race, and sexuality in 20th-century music. She has published articles on race and modernist opera, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Melba Liston and Paul Robeson. She received the Kurt Weill Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in Music Theater for her article “Black Voices/White Sounds: Race and Representation in Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints and Three Acts,” and her article “Queer Encounters in the Music of Billy Strayhorn” was awarded the Philip Brett Award for exceptional musicological work in the field of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual studies. As a member of the Melba Liston Research Collective, Professor Barg served as a guest co-editor for a special issue of the Black Music Research Journal devoted to the career and legacy of Melba Liston.

Professor Barg’s research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC), including most recently as the principal investigator for “Collaborative Creativity: Sound Recording and Music Making.” Her forthcoming book Queer Arrangements: Billy Strayhorn and Midcentury Jazz Collaboration (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), is a new study of Strayhorn that examines his music and career at the intersection of jazz and Black queer history. Professor Barg teaches undergraduate courses in twentieth and twenty-first century music and opera, women and music, and music and dance. Her graduate seminars have examined topics in gender and jazz, feminist musicology, global musical modernisms, critical dance studies, and avant-garde performance.

Selected publications: 

“Strayhorn’s Queer Arrangements.” Improvisation and Social Aesthetics, eds. Georgina Born, Eric Lewis, and Will Straw. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, 183-212.

“Working Behind the Scenes: Gender, Sexuality and Collaboration in the Vocal Arrangements of Billy Strayhorn.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, Vol. 18 (2014), 24-47.

“ 'Taking Care of Music': Gender, Arranging and Collaboration in the Liston-Weston Partnership.” Special Issue on Melba Liston, Black Music Research Journal Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 2014), 97-119.

“Queer Encounters in the Music of Billy Strayhorn.” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Fall 2013), 771-824.

“ ‘Your Music Has Flung the Story of “Hot Harlem” to the Four Corners of the Earth!’: Race and Narrative in Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige.” Musical Quarterly, Vol. 96, No. 3/4 (Summer/Fall 2013 double issue), 1-33.

“Paul Robeson’s Ballad for Americans: Race and the Cultural Politics of ‘People’s Music.’” Journal of the Society for American Music 2/1 (February 2008): 27-70.

“Black Voices/White Sounds: Race and Representation in Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts,” American Music18/2 (Summer 2000), 121-161.

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