University of Virginia Spanish, Italian & Portuguese

Associate Professor of Spanish

Research: Colonial historiography; cartography & literature; Golden Age lyric and epic poetry.

Responsibilities: Director of Undergraduate Studies, Spanish Major Advisor

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 in relation to the emergence of globalism during the early modern period. 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. Mr. Padrón has been actively involved in the governance of the Modern Language Association, and is currently serving as the Disciplinary Representative for “Americas” in the Renaissance Society of America. Recent speaking engagements have taken him to New Orleans, Chicago, Venice and São Paulo. Future commitments will take him first to Paris and then to London, where he is organizing, in cooperation with Dr. Surekha Davies of the University of London, a conference on “Global Dimensions of European Knowledge, 1450-1700.” Mr. Padrón will be on research leave during 2010-11, and residing in Madrid.

Selected publications:

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

’The Indies of the West’ or, the Tale of How an Imaginary Geography Circumnavigated the Globe.” Forthcoming.

“Ideología y naufragio: El Inca Garcilaso frente a José de Acosta.” 400 años de los Comentarios reales. Ed. Song No and Elena Romiti. Montevideo: University of Uruguay, the National Library of Uruguay, and Purdue University (forthcoming in 2010).

“From Abstraction to Allegory: The Imperial Cartography of Vicente de Memije.” Mapping the Colonial Americas, Edited by . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press and The Omohundro Institute. Forthcoming.

“A Sea of Denial: The Early Modern Spanish Invention of the Pacific Rim.” Hispanic Review 77/1 (2009): 1-28.

“La renovación del conquistador: España, Filipinas, y la China en el siglo XVI,” in Desplazamientos y disyunciones: Nuevos itinerarios de los estudios coloniales. Forthcoming.

“Mapping Imaginary Worlds.” Maps: Finding our Place in the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 255-87.

“Against Apollo: Góngora’s Soledad primera and Early Modern Spanish Imperial Cartography.” MLQ 68/3 (2007): 363-93.