Cogut Institute for the Humanities

Andrew Laird

Fall 2021 Faculty Fellow, John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities
Project "Humanism and Experience in Post-Conquest Mexico: The Early Writings of Fray Cristóbal Cabrera (1530-1545)"
Last updated August 9, 2022, based on June 2021 biographical sketch

Biography

Andrew Laird is the John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities. His recent self-authored and collaborative publications include Antiquities and Classical Traditions in Latin America (Wiley 2018), The Epic of America (re-issued as a Bloomsbury paperback in 2020), and Orazio: L’Arte Poetica (Bologna 2020), a study of Horace’s Ars Poetica to introduce Augusto Rostagni’s pioneering commentary on the text.

His project at the Cogut Institute, titled “Humanism and Experience in Post-Conquest Mexico: The Early Writings of Fray Cristóbal Cabrera (1530-1545),” surveyed the work of the first known European poet on the American continent, who wrote in Latin. Profoundly influenced by Erasmus of Rotterdam, Cabrera addressed contemporary concerns: his invectives against the corruption of the Spaniards in the Indies anticipated the stance that would be adopted later in the 1540s by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.