Mackenzie Cooley
Associate Professor of History, Director of Latin American and Latine Studies
Mackenzie Cooley is an intellectual historian who studies the uses, abuses, and understandings of the natural world. Her first book, The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Humans, and Race in the Renaissance (University of Chicago Press, 2022), offers a deep history of how Renaissance Italy and the Spanish empire were shaped by a lingering fascination with breeding. Her research has been funded by NEH-CAORC, the Fulbright Foundation, and Mellon Foundation, among others. From 2021-22, Cooley was Villa I Tatti Residential Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies where she developed research for her second monograph, Treasury of Knowledge: Medicine in Renaissance Empire. She has co-edited two volumes: Natural Things: Ecologies of Knowledge in the Early Modern World (Routledge, 2023) and Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue (Lever, 2025).
Cooley is committed to incorporating original research into her teaching, including through the New World Nature history laboratory.
Recent Courses Taught
Conquest of the Americas
Scientific Revolution
History of European Thought
Bioprospecting and Ecologies of Medicine
Research Interests
History of Science; Early Modern World; Colonial Latin America; Environmental History; History of Gender and Sexuality; Animal Studies; Genetics and History
Distinctions
- Dean’s Scholarly Achievement Award for Early Career Achievement, Spring 2023
- John R. Hatch Excellence in Teaching Award, Spring 2021
Select Publications
- The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022. (Honorable Mention, Morris D. Forkosch Book Prize 2023 for the Journal of the History of Ideas; Honorable Mention, Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies 2023 Book Award, Modern Languages Association; Shortlist, 2023 Cundill History Prize; Shortlist, 2023 Society for the History of Natural History, Book Prize (Thackray Medal; Longlist, 2024 British Society for the History of Science Pickstone Prize; Winner of the 2019 Cappadocia Prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript for the Society for Italian Historical Studies)
- Natural Things in Early Modern Worlds. Co-edited with Anna Toledano and Duygu Yildirim. London/New York: Routledge, 2023.
- Knowing an Empire: Early Modern Chinese and Spanish Worlds in Dialogue, Co-Editor (with Huiyi Wu) and Contributor. Lever Press – University of Michigan, 2025.
- “Likeness Across Nature: The Anatomical Eye of Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente (1533-1619),” Nuncius: The Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science 39, (2024): 305-337.
- “The Giant Remains: Mesoamerican Medicine, Extinction, and Cycles of Empire,” Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, Volume 112, number 1, (2021), 45-67.
- “Teaching Tepahtia: A Pedagogical Reflection on Knowledge and Medicine in Mexico, 1400-1600,” Journal of Medieval Worlds, Volume 1, Number 3, (2019), 85-104.
- “The Tira of Don Martin: A Living Nahua Chronicle,” Alanna Radlo-Dzur, Mackenzie Cooley, Emily Kaplan, Leah Bright, E. Keats Webb, Mary Elizabeth Haude, Tana Villafana, Amanda K. Satorius, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Volume 3, Number 3, (2021), 7-37.
- “Marketing Nobility: Horsemanship in Renaissance Italy,” Animals at Court, Europe, c. 1200-1800, Mark Hengerer and Nadir Weber, eds. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 109-126.
- “Diamond in the Rough: Nobility and Spanish Naples in Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Volume 19, Number 3, (2019): 71-97.
- “Southern Italy and the New World in the Age of Encounters.” The Discovery of the New World in Early Modern Italy. Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey, eds. Cambridge University Press. 2017.
- Beasts and Books: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Rare Books and Manuscripts in Stanford Libraries’ Special Collections. Stanford: Stanford University Libraries, 2015. Preface by Paula Findlen.
Professional Affiliations
Renaissance Society of America
History of Science Society
Scientiae
Southwest Seminar on Latin American History
American Historical Association
LA Global
Appointed to the Faculty
2018Educational Background
Ph.D., Stanford University
M.A., Stanford University
B.A., Cornell University
