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Amizade Faculty Instructors

Name: Nicholas Biddle, PhD

Faculty Biography: I enlisted in a summer study abroad program that took me to Spain for eight weeks when I was sixteen. The Spanish seared into my brain that summer created a life of opportunities. At nineteen I arranged flour and water drop-offs with Mexican fishermen along the Baja coastline, in preparation for sea-kayaking the Sea of Cortez. I spent my honeymoon in Spain, and several years after that landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a summer of pre-dissertation research. Two years later I returned to Argentina, this time for a year of dissertation research conducted mostly in the northwestern province of Salta. My writing focuses on democratic movements. In 1993 I led a group of students to Quito, Ecuador for a summer study abroad program. It was the first of six intensive summers in Ecuador and Peru, learning Spanish, Andean history and culture. The course I taught in those summers was entitled ‘Race, Resistance, and Resources’. The students and I spent approximately 40 percent of our time in the mountains and forests with indigenous communities. Each year a subset joined me in climbing the world’s highest active volcano, Mt. Cotopaxi (19,470 ft.), and each year we reached the summit. Many of those students stay in contact. A few live in Spain, and several in Latin America. One teaches Ecuadorian history at the University of Tennessee. In my own life, and in the lives of the students with whom I’ve worked, intercultural learning has been the launching pad to the future.