Hometown: Greenville, South Carolina
Bio: My name is Nikolas Canoutas, and I am a native of Greenville, South Carolina. Growing up in a multilingual household (my father is of Greek-American and my mother is Romanian), has inspired my passion for learning foreign languages and navigating across intercultural boundaries. I am a first-year graduate student in the M.A. program in Latin American Studies. I graduated from Wofford College in January 29, 2026. I majored in History and Spanish and minored in Arabic with a academic concentration in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Studies. During my undergraduate studies, I studied abroad in Summer 2024 at the Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, I developed a passion for Andean Studies and cultural anthropology in the Southern Cone. Having interned for two months during Summer 2026 at the Language Planning Center (CAL) department in the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) in Rabat, Morocco, I researched language policies governing the status and use of the Amazigh language in Morocco as well as circular integration and the ongoing and evolving endeavors at standardizing the language. I plan to use the knowledge and experience that I have gained to conduct research on indigenous languages in Latin America, such as the Mayan languages of Central America and the Quechuan and Aymara languages of the Andes Mountains. I am very passionate about history, indigenous studies, language planning, revitalization, and linguistic policies, as well socio-political movements in the modern nation states of Latin America. I am aspired to learn more about the history of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America during this graduate program.
Concentration: History, Culture, and Society
Research Area – Substantive: History, Linguistics, Cultural Studies, Indigenous Studies
Research Area – Geographic: Mexico, Andes Mountains, Southern Cone