The latest issue of the Journal of the Society for American Music includes a BW graduate among its authors. CONgrats to Chase Castle ’19, whose article, “Sonic Domination and the Politics of Race in Southern Antebellum Hymnody,” was selected for October 2023 publication.
The Journal of the Society for American Music, published by Cambridge University Press, is devoted to “all aspects of American music and music in the Americas.” This international, peer-reviewed journal is a preeminent resource for musicologists, music theorists, and other music scholars.
Castle writes: “I'm delighted that my first peer-reviewed article has been published in Journal of the Society for American Music. This article examines the political function of hymns on southern antebellum plantations. I use the term "sonic domination" to describe how white slaveowners maintained an aural landscape and explain the ways in which enslaved African Americans circumvented the oppressive power of the planter elite through hymnody.”
At BW, Castle graduated with a double major in Music History & Literature and Keyboard Performance. Currently, he is a Benjamin Franklin Fellow and PhD candidate in Music at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation, “The Gospel in Black and White: Race and Power in American Evangelical Hymnody, 1840-1900,” is scheduled for completion later this academic year.
Written by Destinee Siebe '19
BW Conservatory of Music Concert Production & Scheduling Coordinator.