James Nate Nichols is a PhD student in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There, his research foci involve three distinct but related fields: 1) exile and displacement in contemporary literature and film with a focus on the shift from exile to migrantion;  2) trans-Atlantic studies and comparative post-dictatorial aesthetics and politics; and 3), film philosophy/theory with a focus on Raúl Ruiz in particular. He has published in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies: travesia (with others forthcoming) and has presented at conferences internationally. At UCSB, James Nate is a Student Advisory Board Member for the Graduate Center for Literary Research; an editorial member of the Graduate Student Journal Exchanges; and a member of the Memory Studies Research Group. Previously, at the University of California, Santa Cruz James Nate completed his MA in modern literature and graduated magna cum laude with a BA in modern literary studies and a minor in education. At Cabrillo College, he graduated with high honors in Spanish, liberal arts, and a certificate in communications.

He has been the recipient of the Stuart Atkins Fellowship, the Max Kade Fellowship, grants from the Graduate Center for Literary Research, and a Central Recruitment Fellowship as Doctoral Scholars Fellow. Previously, James Nate received the Santa Cruz Women’s Club Re-entry Scholarship in collaboration with the Services for Transfer and Re-entry Students center at the University of California, Santa Cruz and was the recipient of the Santa Cruz Chapter of Omega Nu’s scholarship for scholastic achievement, among others. 

At the Global Latinidades Center, James Nate is currently a research assistant and staff member and has worked on various initiatives and projects. He has worked as a project co-coordinator and event organizer for the Voces Nuevas Latinx Author Series. This initiative brought both up-and-coming and internationally acclaimed Latinx authors to UCSB in order to provide high quality, bilingual English and Spanish literary eventsand writing workshops lead by these authors . There, he helped to organize events, coordinate logistics with authors and agents, and produce and translate communication materials. James Nate was also the program director of the interdisciplinary conference: Love, Violence, and Feminine Resistance: Dis-/placement, Reckoning, and Reconciliation. This bilingual interdisciplinary conference approached the phenomena of forced displacement and mass migration by focusing on works of dis-/placed female artists and explored the ways that these artists have articulated and imagined myriad forms of identity, resistance, belonging, and home. James Nate oversaw all aspects of the conference, including logistics (housing and  funding), communication materials, translations, and fundraising. He was also a facilitator and fellow for the Global Spains Workshop on Conviviality and Accompaniment Praxis, a two-week research and practice exchangeprogram in Madrid that included students and artist from UCSB, Duke University, and Madrid. The Global Latinidades Center  also helped fund James Nate to present at the  5th Biennial Latinx Literary Theory & Criticism conference at the City University of New York Graduate Center in April 2023. 

As an educator, James Nate has has worked in a variety of settings and has taught at both undergraduate and graduate levels. At UCSB, he has worked in the Comparative Literature, German and Slavic, and French and Italian Departments; at UCSC, in the Writing Program and departments of Literature, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, History of Consciousness, and History of Arts and Visual Culture; at Cabrillo College in the Summer Migrant Program and the Writing Center. At the Université Paris 8, Vincennes - Saint-Denis, he has taught in the Centre de Langues (CDL) and the Langues, Littératures et Civilisations Etrangères et Régionales Parcours : Mondes anglophones (LLCER) departments. 

James Nate is always open to all types of questions and/or collaborative project ideas and can be reached at: jnnichols@ucsb.edu