Charles F. Walker

Charles "Chuck" Walker is the MacArthur Foundation Endowed Chair in International Human Rights and professor of Latin American history at the University of California, Davis. He also servesasdirector of its Hemispheric Institute on the Americas. Hisinterests include Peru, natural disasters, social movements, subaltern politics, truth commissions, and sports and empire.

In 1999, Walker published Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Transition from Colony to Republic, 1780–1840 (Duke University Press, 1999), which was translated into Spanish as De Túpac Amaru a Gamarra: Cuzco y la creación del Perú republicano (Centro Bartolomé de Las Casas, 3 editions).

In 2008, he published Shaky Colonialism: The 1746 Earthquake-Tsunami in Lima, Peru and its Long Aftermath (Duke University Press 2008), which according to one reviewer is "a brilliant discussion into how natural disasters affect not only the psyche of the inhabitants but also the manner in which social spaces and interactions are rethought with an eye toward achieving social order and control." The book was translated into Spanish as Colonialismo en ruinas: Lima frente al terremoto y tsunami de 1746 (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos & IFEA, 2012).

In 2014, he published The Tupac Amaru Rebellion (Harvard University Press, 2014), a narrative history of the uprising (1780–83).The Tupac Amaru Rebellion earned the 2015 Norris and Carol Hundley Award, given by the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

He has also coedited several volumes in Peru, including a collection of his essays, Diálogos con el Perú (FEP San Marcos, 2009). He was co-translator (with Carlos Aguirre and Willie Hiatt) ofAlberto Flores Galindo’s Buscando un Inca/In Search of an Inca (Cambridge University Press, 2010). His article, "When Fear Rather than Reason Dominates: Priests Behind the Lines in the Tupac Amaru Rebellion (1780–1783)," won the José María Arguedas Prize from the Peru section in Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 2013.

Walker currently serves on the Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association as well as editorial boards in Chile, Peru, Spain, and the United States. He is the Andes editor for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History.