HESCAH Lecture | Dr. Jesús Escobar, "The Empire Builds Back: Seventeenth-Century Architecture from the Americas to Europe"

HESCAH welcomes Dr. Jesús Escobar to give a lecture based on new and ongoing research on seventeenth-century Spanish architecture in a transatlantic context. Dr. Escobar is the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History at Northwestern University, where he specializes in the architecture, urbanism, and cartography of the early modern Spanish Empire. His two award‑winning books—The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid (2003) and Habsburg Madrid: Architecture and the Spanish Monarchy (2022)—both received the Eleanor Tufts Award from the Society for Iberian Global Art. Escobar is currently completing a transatlantic study of architecture in the Spanish colonial world, titled Americans Abroad in the Seventeenth Century, and co-authoring Architecture in the Spanish World, 1500 to 1800 with Michael Schreffler. He also serves as editor for the Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies series at Penn State University Press and holds leadership roles in professional organizations like the National Committee for the History of Art.