University Distinguished Professor Melissa Fitch has received a $137,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to pursue a project that she is passionate about, "The Road is Made Upon Walking," one that was in large part related to, and inspired by, the ancient pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, Spain, one that continues today. Dr. Fitch will be tracing the notion of life as a journey/path through the arts and humanities across countries and regions in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world and finally, directly to our own doorstep, the US/Mexico Borderlands. This material will be incorporated into the courses she teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese as well as in a Humanities Seminar she will teach for the broader Tucson community in fall of 2025. Her plan is to expand the project beyond the Luso-Hispanic works in the future, ideally incorporating, among others, the two countries where she had Fulbright fellowships, China (2011-12) and India (2016-17).
Most of the courses Professor Fitch teaches on Hispanic culture, literature and film at the University of Arizona begin with the Spanish poet Antonio Machado’s (1875-1939) Poema XXIX de sus “Proverbios y Cantares” from the book Campos de Castilla (1912), Joan Manuel Serrat’s song “Cantares,” based on Machado’s poem, and an analysis of the film The Way (dir Emilio Estevez, 2010) about the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. The courses end with her students dreaming of their own professional "camino" or path in life and thinking of possibilities for their future that would be consistent with their core values. It wasn’t until she spent 35 days walking 15-20 miles a day from France over the Pyrenees mountains and across Northern Spain in May and June of 2023, surrounded by beauty and nature, often alone but also at times engaged in deep conversations with people from around the world, that she realized that the metaphor of the Camino was far more inspirational, global, and multifaceted than she had ever imagined. That was the genesis of her NEH project.