Rev. Dr. Charrise Barron is an assistant professor in the Department of Music at Harvard University. She is an ethnomusicologist and historian of African American religious culture. She earned her PhD from Harvard University in African and African American Studies, with religion primary field of study and ethnomusicology as secondary.
Her current book project The Platinum Age of Gospel explores contemporary gospel music and illuminates the marked shifts away from previous eras of gospel performance and culture which have defined the last thirty years of the genre.
Dr. Barron is an ordained Baptist minister and has served in music ministry at churches throughout the United States and in London, England. She holds a Master of Divinity summa cum laude from Yale Divinity School and a certificate from Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music (ISM). While at Yale, she pastored The Black Church at Yale (BCAY), a student-run campus church founded in the 1970s by black Yale students and alumni.