Dr. Ricardo Padrón holds a PhD in Romance Languages from Harvard University. He is currently Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Virginia. 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. His current work focuses 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.
Students in Prof. Harrison’s seminar “Guaman Poma” are reading “Tracking Space,” a chapter from Ricardo Padrón’s The Spacious Word. For a PDF, send a request to reglee@umd.edu.
