Noble David Cook
Professor (Colonial and Modern Latin America, Historical Demography, Andean Ethnohistory, Imperial Spain), University of Texas, Ph.D. 1973
DM 388B Tel. (305) 348-3966 email: cookn@fiu.edu
Research interests:
Influenced by the challenges posed by the findings of the “Berkeley School” of historical demography, Professor Cook’s initial research and publications focused on the size and changes in the Amerindian population of Peru following sixteenth century contact with the Europeans. In 1974 at the Universidad Católica of Peru his research itinerary shifted to ethnohistory, as he joined Dr. Franklin Pease and began an exhaustive investigation of the native peoples of the Colca Valley. Work there led to an examination of one of the Spanish conquerors and settlers of the valley, whose career was changed by charges of bigamy. The resulting micro-history, co-authored with Alexandra Parma Cook, tells much of concepts of honor, marriage and family, acquisition of wealth, and the Spanish legal and administrative system. The Cooks also translated and edited the Discovery and Conquest of Peru written around 1551 by Pedro de Cieza de León, and are engaged in two projects based on research in Sevillian archives, one on the sailor’s district of Triana, the other on the plague and public policy.
Cook’s interest in the relation between disease and history continues. In 1992 he co-edited a book on epidemic disease in colonial Spanish America, and in 1998 published a comparative text on the Atlantic World centering on the impact of disease on Amerindian conquest. In the meantime he continues to explore the career of Luis Gerónimo de Oré, born in Guamanga, Peru, in the mid-1540s. Oré entered the Franciscan Order and over a long life managed to compose important texts for conversion of the Quechua and Aymara, and served in work of evangelization in the Andes, Florida, and Chile, where he died as Bishop of Concepción. Here too is another work of Atlantic history.
Curriculum Vitae: Link
Books:
