(Ph.D., Harvard University 1995) 

Areas of instruction and research: Nineteenth and twentieth-century Spanish-American literature, from the Romantics to the Avant-Garde, with a special focus on Hispanic Modernismo and Posmodernismo. Additional areas of interest: poetry and poetics; modern philosophy and history of ideas; contemporary literary theory; Cuban and Puerto Rican literature; nineteenth century Peninsular, and contemporary Spanish American literature.

Books: the neobarroque novella La estación florida (Isla Negra, 1997), a full-length monograph on El lenguaje y la poesía de Julio Herrera y Reissig (Biblioteca de Marcha, 1999), and a PEN Club Award-winning collection of short stories, La vida vulgar (Isla Negra, 2004). His most recent works are: Gris en azul, a study of Rubén Darío and his reception among posmodernista poets (Academia Nicaragüense de la Lengua, 2010), and another PEN Club Award-winning short story collection, La virgen de los boleros (Isla Negra, 2015). Prof. Castillo has also published a variety of scholarly articles on Spanish American Romanticism, Modernismo, Posmodernismo, and the Avant-Garde. His most recent scholarly work is focused on the oeuvre of Rubén Darío.

Work in progress: a study on 20th and 21th Nicaraguan poetry, from Posmodernismo till the present.