Chase Castle
Biography
Chase Castle is a cultural historian of music whose research explores American evangelicalism across the nineteenth century, focusing on racial politics in hymns. His current book project, The Gospel in Black and White: Race and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century American Hymns, uncovers African American and secular musical influences in gospel hymnody, a sacred genre that rose to prominence during the second half of the century. Unlike previous scholarship that often separates Black from white histories and treats African American music primarily in terms of spirituals, Castle’s research considers how racial politics played out in widespread, popular, sacred practices. He has authored articles published in the Journal of the Society for American Music and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, which obtained research support from Harvard University, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Music Library Association. Castle received a BM in Music History & Literature and Keyboard Performance from Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music and a PhD in Music from the University of Pennsylvania. He is also an active organist and choral conductor who performs most Sunday mornings at St. Mary’s Church, Hamilton Village in Philadelphia.
