Lisa Barg

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.