CV

Timothy Ryan Day, PhD

Associate Professor and Program Director, Department of English, Saint Louis University, Madrid

EDUCATION

  • PhD in English Literature, Arizona State University (2016)
  • M.A. in English Literature, Saint Louis University (2008)
  • Máster en Estudios Culturales y Literarios Anglo-norteamericano, Autonóma de Madrid (2008)
  • B.A. in English Literature, Magna cum laude, Northeastern Illinois University (2006)

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My research focuses on Ecocriticism, Biosemiotics, Shakespeare and the botanical in literature especially where it is cultivated or edible. I am particularly interested in how Shakespeare’s work is invoked in novels and films, and how it influences the increasingly complex human umwelt. I look at how adaptation of Shakespeare’s work is an active environmental force and how literature itself is descendent of the microbial and an ancestor of AI. I often focus on the ways in which literary representations of agriculture, seasons, and food, especially in Shakespeare, can help illuminate the networks of naturecultures that permeate the material world, and help us imagine the transcorporeal relationship of bodies to their habitats across time. I am dedicated to the intersection of narrative with scholarly work and how the fusing of approaches can lead to more effective communication which can inspire much needed dialogue. As a writer I aim to create stories that actively engage with the world around us and as such become vehicles for change.

ACADEMIC WORK EXPERIENCE

Saint Louis University: Madrid, Spain, 2011-present

Program Director, Department of English 2020-

Courses taught: 

  • Ecocriticism
  • Introduction to Shakespeare
  • Alchemists, Cooks and Witches
  • Milton
  • Travel Writing
  • Nature, Ecology and Literature
  • Food and Literature
  • Monsters of Europe 
  • Media, Technology and Literature
  • Literature and Medicine
  • Creative Writing 
  • Advanced Writing for Professionals 
  • The Process of Composition 

Arizona State University: Tempe, Arizona, 2009-2011

Courses Taught: 

  • Composition levels 1 and 2 

Scottsdale Community College: Scottsdale, Arizona, 2009-2011

Courses Taught: 

  • Composition levels 1 and 2 

Shantou University: Shantou, China, Academic Year 2008/09

Courses Taught: 

  • Communication Strategies 

Saint Louis University: Madrid, Spain, Academic Year 2007/08

Courses Taught: 

  • The Process of Composition 
  • ESL

PUBLICATIONS

Monograph

Shakespeare and the Evolution of the Human Umwelt: Adapt, Interpret, and Mutate. London: Routledge. (2021)

Academic Articles, Chapters, & Translations

“The Wildest Stock.” Food and Literature. MLA (Publication forthcoming in 2023).

“Immortal Codes: Genetics, Ghosts, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Interdisciplinary Science Research. London: Routledge. (2023).

“The Forest for the Trees: Richard Powers’ the Overstory, Macbeth, and the Holobiont.” Ecozon@. Vol. 13 No. 2 (2022)

Review: Basura: Cultures of Waste in Contemporary Spain. Amago, Samuel. Charlotesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021. Published in Green Letters (2022).

Day, Timothy. “With Parted Eye: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard Powers’, Orfeo, and Biosemiotics” Green Letters. Vol 21. No. 3. London: Routledge. doi: 10.1080/14688417.2018.1512418. (2018) 

Day, Timothy and Andrew Power. “Partiendo el Pan en Shakespeare.” Pan. Artesa Ediciones: Madrid. p. 78. (2016)

Translation: Garcia, Teresa and Garcia, Alberto. “Breathing with the Other: Ethics and Eco-socialist Perspective in the Poetry of Jorge Riechmann.” Ecozon@. Vol 6. No. 1. (2015).

Creative Publications

Outside Athens. Adelaide Books. (2024).

Big Sky. New York: Adelaide Books. (2020)

Green and Grey. Madrid: Lemon Street Press. (2019)

“Frozen.” The Toucan 15. Pg. 3. Chicago: The Toucan. (2012)

Waiting For Tom. Screenplay. Quarterfinalist in the American Zoetrope Screenplay Contest (2010)

“Skewed Horizons.” Apocalypse 12. pg. 52. Chicago: Apocalypse Literary Arts Coalition. (2004)

Current Creative Projects

Sum Facades. Upcoming poetry collection.

The Orchard. Novel in revision.

Outside Athens. Novel in revision.

Great Fires. Short story collection in revision.

CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS

“Proud Cedars, Mutinous Winds: Coriolanus, the Microbiome, and the Holobiont.” British Society for Literature and Science Conference. (Edinburgh 2023).

“I See a Damaged Planet: Diffractive Reading, Biosemiotics and Reconstituting the Human through Shakespeare in HBO’s Station Eleven.” TVSERIES 2022. (Valencia 2022)

“Shakespearean Family Trees: A Diffractive Memoir of Metaphor, Literature and Genetics.” Tree Lines. (Maynooth 2022).

“Pursued by Gaps: The Winter’s Tale, the holobiont, and illusions of autonomy.” European Society for the Study of Literature. (Mainz 2022). 

“Speaking from Beyond the Grave: Ghosts and Genetics in Shakespeare.” Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies. (Neuchatel 2022). 

“Shakespeare’s Genesis: Poetry, Emergence, and Biosemiotics.” 4th International Conference on Science and Literature. (Girona 2022). 

“Seeds: Media, Politics, Virality, and Text in Victor Conde and Amaya Galeote’s Macbeth.” Macbeth in European Culture. (Murcia 2022)

“A Gentler Scion: Katherine May’s Wintering, Shakespeare’s the Winter’s Tale, and Madrid’s Uncanny Winter Storm.” Nature and Narrative Conference (Madrid 2022).

“Pursued by a Bear: The Human and the Animal in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.” Midwestern Modern Language Association. (Milwaukee 2020). Accepted but could not attend. 

“John Milton’s Paradise Regained as Response to the Black Legend of Spanish Cruelty.” SEDERI Conference. Universidad de La Laguna. (Tenerife 2021). 

“Dystopia Now: Richard Powers’ The Overstory and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” Revisiting Dystopia in Literature and the Visual Arts. (UCAM, Murcia 2020). 

“Light and Enlightenment: Milton in Ian McEwan’s Solar.” Retaking Earth: From Nature Writing to Climate Change Fiction. Nova University (Lisbon 2020).

“Migrations: Butterflies and Shakespeare in Barabara Kingsolvers’s Flight Behavior” Midwestern Modern Language Association (Chicago 2019).

“Co-conspirators: invoking MacBeth in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment-UKI. Plymouth University. (Plymouth, UK 2019).

“Applauding the Slaughter: Hamlet, and Pagan Spain.” Saint Louis University Literature Conference. (Madrid 2016) 

“Gardens of Discovery.” Saint Louis University Literature Conference. (Madrid 2015)

“Uncanny Justice: Amazons and the Technology of Colonization.” Saint Louis Graduate

Student Conference (Madrid 2008) 

“Joyce and the Dialogic Creation of Home and the Present.” Saint Louis Madrid Graduate Student Colloquium (Madrid 2007)

“Emily Dickinson and the Birth of the Photographic Image.” Saint Louis Madrid Graduate Student Conference (Madrid 2006)

“Jean Genet: Perceptions of a Thief and Poet.” Northeastern Illinois University Honors Colloquium (2006)

“Unwound Dancers.” Northeastern Illinois University Creative Colloquium (2006)

“Kafka and Nationalist Prague.” Northeastern Illinois University Honors Colloquium (2005)

“Ivan and Zosima: Religion and Conflict in the Brother’s Karamazov.” Northeastern 

Illinois University Honors Colloquium (2004)

MEDIA PLACEMENT

Interview with Madrid Cosmopolitan (Madrid 2020)

Interview with Chef Digital (Madrid 2020)

Interview with Vaughan Radio (Madrid 2019)

Interview with Two Harbors Radio. (Two Harbors, MN 2019)

Reading at Two Harbors Public Library (Two Harbors, MN 2019)

Interview on Canal Cocina (2016)

Regular Contributor to the online creative nonfiction site The Nervous Breakdown (2008-12)

Regular Contributor to the online culture magazine Vaya Madrid (2012-14)

SERVICE

Board Member: Serve the City: 2016-2019

Board Member: The American club of Madrid: 2017-2018