Education
B.A., Kenyon College
M.A., Vanderbilt University
A.M and Ph.D., Harvard University
Biography
Professor Castillo has taught in the Haverford College Department of Spanish since 1991. Before that, he was an instructor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the History and Literature Concentration at Harvard.
He received his B.A. in Sociology at Kenyon College, his M.A. at Vanderbilt University in Spanish Literature, and an A.M. and Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University, (1992) with a dissertation on the captivity narratives of the Spanish American Colonial period.
Among his publications are the novel Muriendo por la dulce patria mía (Planeta, 1998) and a collection of essays and chronicles Antípodas (Cuarto Propio, 2014)
Research
His scholarly training and focus is in Colonial Spanish American Literature and Historiography. He wrote his dissertation on captivity narratives, particularly on the Cautiverio feliz, a Seventeenth-Century text written by a Chilean-born Spanish soldier captured by the so-called Araucanian Indians. He is also interested in Nineteenth-Century Latin American political and literary thought; Ethnic, Race, and National Identity in Spanish America; Historical Fictions; Literature of Exile; Popular Culture; Music and Politics; Poetry and Politics. In addition, as a novelist and short fiction writer, he teaches Creative Fiction Writing. He regularly teaches courses in the Comparative Literature Program.