Nicholas Q. Emlen

Nicholas Q. Emlen

PhD Student, Linguistic Anthropology
Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship

“The Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship allowed me to improve my Quechua language skills while learning how indigenous languages are implicated in struggles over race, modernity, and nationhood in Peru.”

Nicholas Emlen spent last summer studying the Quechua language in Cuzco, Peru and learning about the social dimensions of indigenous language use in the Andes. This experience helped prepare him for his dissertation research on language contact between Quechua speakers from the Andean highlands and speakers of the Machiguenga language of the Peruvian Amazon. Nicholas’s research comprises three parts: a reconstruction of part of the ancient Protoquechua grammatical system, a historical analysis of the contact between the two languages, and a study of the language ideologies that are enacted in the interactions between Quechua and Machiguenga speakers in the rich agricultural area between their territories.

Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships are distributed by the International Institute’s centers. Nicholas received his fellowship through the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program.