Ricardo Padrón

Ricardo Padrón is an Associate Professor of Spanish 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. Inspired by the work of Henri Lefebvre, J. Brian Harley, Paul Carter and other contributors to 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 interests also include the formation of early modern masculinity, especially as it occurs in the poetry of Alonso de Ercilla and Garcilaso de la Vega. His most recent work, however, explores Spanish interest in the Pacific and Asia, as well as the poetry of Luis de Góngora.