"Early Modern Visual and Spatial Imaginaries: The Lessons of Sketch Maps"
Tuesday, March 11th, 4:45 PM
Goldwin Smith Hall G22
Abstract
What do we make of “bad maps” and “amateur maps,” the kind of cartographic image that is often drawn by a person with none of the appropriate professional training, and perhaps little or no interest in mimicking “real maps”? Sketch maps are scattered throughout the documentary record of the early modern world, but they are rarely the object of scholarly attention. This talk will examine what these maps might have to tell us about the ways people imagined space and place in the early modern Iberian world.
Biography
Ricardo Padrón is Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. He is interested in the history of space, place, and empire in the early modern imagination, with a particular emphasis on its literary and cartographic dimensions. He is the author of The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature and Empire in Early Modern Spain (Chicago 2004) and The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West (Chicago 2020). His work has been supported by the NEH and the ACLS. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Renaissance Society of America and is the founding president of the Society for Early Transpacific Studies.
