Ph.D., Harvard University

M.A., University of Chicago

B.A., University of Virginia

Ricardo Padrón is an Associate Professor of Spanish. He holds a BA in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia, an MA in Divinity from the University of Chicago, and an MA and Ph.D. in Romance Languages from Harvard University. He is interested in the literature and culture of the early modern Hispanic world, particularly in the various expressions of the Hispanic imperial imagination. His first book, The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature and Empire in Early Modern Spain, was published in 2004 by the University of Chicago Press. Inspired by the work in contemporary critical geography, the book examines both maps and literary works from sixteenth-century Spain in the light of the changing conceptualizations of space and rationalizations of empire. His current work focusses on Spanish interest in Pacific and Asia in the wake of the Encounter with the Americas. He has also published on the poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega, Fernando de Herrera, and Luis de Góngora, as well as on the mapping of imaginary worlds throughout the modern period. His work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Spanish Program for Cultural Cooperation with United States Universities, and the University of Virginia’s School of Arts and Sciences.

Books

Reorienting the Indies: Spain, the Pacific, and Asia, 1513-1609 (Forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press). 

The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

“(Un)Inventing America: The Transpacific Indies in Oviedo and Gómara.”  Forthcoming in Colonial Latin American Review.

“The Philippines and the Body Politic: The Transpacific Cartography of Vicente de Memije” in Transpacific Engagements: Exchange, Translation, and Visual Culture in the Age of Empires, 1565–1898, Edited by Florina H. Capistrano-Baker, et. al.  Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, Forthcoming.

“Las indias olvidadas.” Razón cartografica.  http://razoncartografica.com/  Forthcoming.

 “Mundus Novus - China - Terra Australis: Successive New World Fantasies” forthcoming volume on Amerigo Vespucci to be published by Universidade de Lisboa.

“Producing China: Sinophobia vs. Sinophilia in the Sixteenth Century Iberian World,” Review of Culture (Instituto Cultural do Governo da R.A.E de Macau) 46 (2014): 94-107.

“Mapping Plus Ultra: Cartography, Space, and Hispanic Modernity.”  Empires of Vision: A Reader. Edited by Martin Jay and Sumathi Ramaswamy.  Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2014. 211-45. [Reprint of earlier article published in Representations.]