Nikolas P. Kakkoufa joined the Department in 2017. Before his appointment at Columbia, he taught at Princeton University and the University of Cyprus. He received a BA in Classical Studies and Philosophy and an MA in Modern Greek Philology from the University of Cyprus and a PhD in Modern Greek Studies from King’s College London (2015). During 2020-2021 he was a Marilena Laskiridis Research Fellow in Modern Greek Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Program in Hellenic Studies where he also directs the Modern Greek Language Program and teaches language classes (Elementary to Advanced) and classes on Modern Greek and Comparative Literature, Reception, and Sexuality. He is also an affiliated faculty member of the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender. He is an elected member on the Lecturers Advisory Committee (2020-2023) and a Senator (Humanities nontenured seat, 2021-2023) on the Columbia University Senate. In 2021 he was awarded a Provost Large-Scale Teaching & Learning Grant for the project Learning Greece from the Streets: An Urban E-Archaeology of the City.
His ongoing research projects focus on the examination of Modern Greek and English/American literature, on queer theory, on the image of the city in literature, as well as on the use of literature & translation pedagogy in second language acquisition. He has given presentations and has published papers on pedagogy and the work of Vitsenzo Kornaros, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Kostis Palamas, Georgios Tertsetis, Dinos Christianopoulos, C. P. Cavafy, Kostas Karyotakis, Nikolas Calas, Lefteris Poulios, Michalis Ganas, and others. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled ‘Word is the flesh’: the homosexual body in the work of Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, and C. P. Cavafy.
