Megan Steigerwald Ille - AMCS Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Cultures (2018-2020)
Where are you now? Bring us up to speed on what you’re doing.
I am currently in my first year serving as tenure track assistant professor of musicology at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. After completing my AMCS postdoc at WashU, I began as an Educator faculty member at CCM, and have been fortunate to transition into this new role in Fall 2023. During my time at CCM, I've been busy completing my first book, Opera for Everyone: The Industry's Experiments with American Opera in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, 2024), and publishing articles in The Opera Quarterly, the Journal of the Society of American Music, and Sound, Stage, Screen--many of which were drafted while at WashU. I've also had the opportunity to create a number of new classes drawn from the time I was part of the AMCS community, including a course on contemporary music making ("Music of the Last Ten Years,") a doctoral seminar on coloniality ("The Postcolonial Canon"), and a class on digital cultures ("Digital Modes of Performance"). I've also collaborated with our Classics and Theatre divisions to serve as musical dramaturge for the Fall 2022 production of Lysistrata and The Trojan Women. Finally, I currently serve as the Graduate Program Advisor for Musicology, supporting our MM and PhD students. Outside of CCM, I am the General Editor of the Society of American Music Bulletin. My husband and I also welcomed the birth of our brilliant and beautiful daughter, Maeve, in late April 2023.
Tell us a little bit about your experiences at WashU and as a part of the AMCS Community. What stood out to you from your time here? What did you learn, develop, or research that you’ve taken with you to wherever you are now?
One of the most memorable aspects of my time at WashU was the incredible interdisciplinarity of the AMCS community and the thought-provoking research questions posed to me by faculty mentors and students alike. When teaching in AMCS I was pushed to consider a range of perspectives, disciplinary perspectives and forms of scholarly inquiry that continue to shape my writing and thinking. In addition, I still draw on techniques learned through the pedagogy certificate program offered by the Center for Teaching and Learning when teaching myself and in my work supporting our CCM graduate students with their work in pedagogy.
What do you miss about WashU, or more broadly, St. Louis? What do you find yourself thinking/reflecting about from your time here?
I miss the opportunity to chat daily with students, staff, and faculty members from areas outside of music. While, obviously, there is a rich community of scholars and students just beyond the walls of the conservatory where I currently work (to say nothing of my incredible colleagues and students at CCM), the AMCS community pushed me into interactions with those deep in research fields that initially seem distant from my own--Latin American Studies, Sports Studies, Popular Culture, English Literature—that, through my time at WashU, I discovered were actually more proximate than expected. While I miss more frequent interactions with my mentors (like the amazing current director of AMCS!) one of the gifts of a WashU postdoc is a network of mentorship and support that follows you wherever you go! Beyond the rich research and teaching community of Wash U, I miss taking students to the Scott Joplin House, browsing at Left-Bank Books, dinners at Olive and Oak, walks in Forest Park, and buying too much cheese at Parker's Table. (I would have also mentioned stuffing my face at Jeni's—but we got one in Cincinnati in July 2023!)
