About
Devon (he/him) is a cultural historian of song exploring the intersections of musical performance, knowledge creation, and social formations of difference. He received his PhD in Music History and Theory from the University of Chicago in 2023. His dissertation, “Navigating Voices: Song, History, and Humanity in the British Imperial Project, 1770–1836,” received the 2024 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the International Musicological Society. Before arriving at Chicago, Devon studied voice and early music performance with William Sharp at the Johns Hopkins University Peabody Conservatory.
Devon’s research has been supported a Predoctoral Fellowship for Excellence through Diversity at the University of Pennsylvania, an LGBT Studies Research Fellowship from Yale University, and an Alvin H. Johnson AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowship from the American Musicological Society. His current book project investigates eighteenth-century singing cultures and colonial discourses of voice throughout the British Empire. His writing has appeared in Critical Inquiry and his article, “Camping Empire: Melophilia and the Castrato Voice in Georgian Britain,” is forthcoming in the Journal of Musicology.