Amy Mitchell-Cook, Ph.D.

Dr. Amy Cook, professor of history, teaches maritime history, Atlantic world, early America and 19th century women.

From the moment Cook volunteered on a maritime project in Yorktown, Virginia, she was hooked on shipwrecks. She later spent 10 years as a maritime archaeologist before shifting her focus to maritime history. She has written numerous chapters, articles and book reviews on the subject. Her book, “Sea of Misadventures: Shipwreck and Survival in Early America,” is based on more than 100 accounts of shipwreck narratives from 1640 to 1840, and explores the issues of gender, race, religion and power, and how it reflected on Americans in Anglo-American society. She co-wrote the chapter, “The Maritime History of Florida,” in the book, “The New History of Florida,” which is the first comprehensive history of the state to be written in a quarter of a century. She also co-wrote a chapter in an upcoming book, “Methodology in La Belle: The Archeology of a 17th Century Ship of New World Colonization,” on the methods archaeologists in Texas used to record and excavate the French ship that sank off the coast of Texas in 1685.

In 2006 and 2007, Cook and Della Scott-Ireton, associate director of the Florida Public Archaeology Network, received funding from The History Channel’s, The Save Our History Grant Program to partner with a Ferry Pass Middle School to help preserve the Colonial Archaeological Trail, a series of outdoor exhibits that feature Pensacola's colonial past. 

Cook received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of Florida, a master’s degree in maritime archaeology and history from East Carolina University, and a doctorate in history from Penn State University.