Megan E.B. Poff (she/her) is a PhD student in English who comes to the program with a background in vocal performance and musicology. She currently serves as voice faculty at York College of Pennsylvania, teaching voice, music history, and music literature. She also instructs vocal pedagogy and speech at Sight and Sound Conservatory in Lancaster, PA.
She holds a Master of Music in vocal performance from Lee University and a Master of Arts in English from Millersville University. Her research interests are hybrid in nature, as she studies the intersection of poetry and song, with a focus on the evolving ballad of the long eighteenth century. She is especially interested in how ballads were collected and circulated in women’s domestic spaces throughout the Atlantic world, from Nelly Custis’s Federalist America to Jane Austen’s Regency England and the West Indies.
She is an active performer with the historical ensemble The Jane Austen Playlist and has presented at several conferences on the role of music in film and in the lives of writers.
She lives in Strasburg, PA, a cozy little borough in Lancaster County, with her husband, two boys, and a Maine Coon, Lady Catherine de Strasburg, who rules them all.