Ricardo Padrón is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia who specializes in the literature and culture of the early modern Hispanic world, with particular emphasis on the Spanish imperial imagination. His first book, The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain (Chicago, 2004) makes a seminal contribution to the study of cartography and literature in the Spanish sixteenth century. His current research involves the role of the Pacific and East Asia in Spanish cartographies of the Indies.