Bernadette Myers

Bernadette Myers is an Assistant Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, with a courtesy appointment in Environmental Studies. She specializes in early modern English literature and culture, particularly the intersection of theater, environment, and urban sustainability. Her research bridges the environmental humanities and premodern studies, emphasizing how ecological challenges shaped artistic expression and vice versa.

Education: PhD in English (Columbia University, 2021); BA in English (University of Kansas, 2013). Prior to WashU, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at NYU’s Gallatin School, teaching interdisciplinary courses on Shakespeare, environmentalism, and urban studies.

Her research focuses on urban ecology in early modern drama, coal’s literary history before industrialization, and cross-cultural climate themes in 16th-century English and Italian plays. Supported by the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Shakespeare Association of America, she received the 2022 J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize.

Key publications include The Nature of London: Urban Ecology and the Early Modern English Stage (book project) and articles in Shakespeare Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, and ISLE. Her work advocates for premodern literature’s relevance to modern ecological debates.