Events Calendar

Join the UI Latin American Studies Program for a guest lecture by Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Ricardo Padrón entitled "Not Your Grandfather’s Renaissance: Rethinking the Early Modern World" on Thursday, Oct. 13, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., at 1117 University Capitol Centre. 

What happens to our understanding of “The Renaissance” when we look at the ways it played out, not just in Florence or Rome, but in Mexico City and Nagasaki? What happens when our notions of a Renaissance artist or intellectual are stretched to accommodate not just canonical figures like Leonardo da Vinci, but also marginalized ones like the Indigenous Peruvian historian Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala? This lecture explores the ways that our understanding of the Renaissance is changing as scholars adopt a more inclusive, global perspective on the years between 1350 and 1700.

Ricardo Padrón is a professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia. He is a noted specialist in the literature and culture of the early modern Hispanic world and has published extensively on questions of empire, literature, cartography, and the geopolitical imagination. His 2004 book, The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature and Empire in Early Modern Spain, is a touchstone for the study of early modern Hispanic cartography. His recent monograph, The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West (2020) challenges established narratives of “the invention of America” by looking at the various ways that sixteenth-century Spaniards attempted to imagine the New World and Asia as connected spaces.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

International Programs (IP) at the University of Iowa (UI) is committed to enriching the global experience of UI students, faculty, staff, and the general public by leading efforts to promote internationally oriented teaching, research, creative work, and community engagement. IP provides support for international students and scholars, administers scholarships and assistance for students who study, intern, or do research abroad, and provides funding opportunities and grant-writing assistance for faculty engaged in international research. IP shares their stories through various media, and by hosting multiple public engagement activities each year.