In this illustrated lecture Professor Kagan examines the history and development of the city view in the early modern Hispanic World. Starting with the traditional definition of the city as urbs and the city as civitas, he analyzes the different ways that artists, both in Europe and the Americas, used to "map" individual towns. Of central importance here is the difference between "chorographic" and the "communicentric" views, and the particular way in which the communicentric view, with its emphasis on civitas, evolved in the colonial Spanish America.

Among the views to be discussed are those of Peruvian cities executed in the early seventeenth century by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. Prof. Kagan will also examine views of other Spanish American cities, especially Potosí, the Andean mining community whose artists, both mestizo and creole, "mapped" this community in a variety of different ways.