{"id":5,"date":"2015-08-01T18:42:51","date_gmt":"2015-08-01T18:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/isabelalvarezsancho.com\/?page_id=5"},"modified":"2026-01-21T14:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:45:10","slug":"publications","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.isabelalvarezsancho.com\/index.php\/publications\/","title":{"rendered":"Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PUBLICATIONS<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

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Books<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Estudios asturianos en el siglo XXI<\/a><\/em> (Asturian Studies in the 21st<\/sup> century), Alvarez-Sancho, Isabel, Covadonga Lamar Prieto and Miriam Villaz\u00f3n Valbuena (eds.) Trabe, 2024. (Edited collection)<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Asturian Studies in the 21st Century<\/strong> is an international collection aiming to rethink Asturian culture in a global context, moving beyond traditional center-periphery dynamics. With a preface by renowned romanist Ana Cano<\/strong> and contributions from leading scholars including Claudia Elena Men\u00e9ndez Fern\u00e1ndez<\/strong>, Eva \u00c1lvarez V\u00e1zquez<\/strong>, Luke Bowe<\/strong>, and Llori\u00e1n Garc\u00eda Fl\u00f3rez<\/strong>, this volume explores how Asturian language, literature, cinema, and culture participate in transnational networks while maintaining distinctive identity. From comparative Romance linguistics to new Asturian cinema, from ecocritical readings of Clar\u00edn and Palacio Vald\u00e9s to pioneering sound studies, the collection demonstrates how peripheral cultures offer access to new frameworks of knowledge. Written in Asturian, Spanish, and English, this volume emerges from SAnTINA<\/a>, an international network dedicated to promoting Asturian studies globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Table of contents<\/a>: Estudios asturianos en el siglo XXI<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Articles and Book Chapters<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAsturian: History, Contemporary Status and Overview of Its Linguistic and Cultural Characteristics<\/a>\u201d with Covadonga Lamar Prieto, Claudia Elena Men\u00e9ndez Fern\u00e1ndez and Miriam Villaz\u00f3n Balbuena. Overview article for language area. Linguistic Minorities in Europe Online<\/em>, De Gruyter, 2023.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

This article inaugurates the area of Asturian in the refereed, multimodal, online database, Linguistic Minorities in Europe Online<\/em>, published by De Gruyter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLa m\u00fasica asturiana y el uso del asturiano en redes sociales\u201d (Asturian Music and the Use of Asturian Language in Social Networks), The Asturian Language:<\/em> Distinctiveness, Identity and Officiality<\/em>, edited by Avelino Corral. Peter Lang, 2023, pp. 85-94.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

This chapter studies language use and its relationship with activism in social media posts by Asturian musicians. Specifically, it examines the original, written publications that appear \u2013from January 1st<\/sup> to August 1st<\/sup>, 2022\u2014on public Facebook pages of Asturian musicians. Asturian musicians are defined as those included in the \u201cAnuario de la M\u00fasica Asturiana\u201d playlist from 2008 to 2021 or in the tab \u201cArtistes\u201d of the digital portal www.musicasturiana.com<\/a> in August, 2021. This study analyzed (1) the language or combination of languages used; (2) the correlation between the languages used in their posts and the ones of their musical lyrics; (3) the languages used and their number of followers; and (4) the connection between the languages used and their activism on social networks. Results indicate a prevalence of Asturian language, followed by Spanish. Also, there is a correlation between posts in Asturian and musicians who sing in Asturian or interpret instrumental music (without lyrics). With regards to the number of followers, the most active groups who write in Asturian have between 1000 to 5000 followers, which does not suggest an ample reach of their publications. Finally, this study did not find a great number of posts that explicitly address topics related to activism, although writing and singing in Asturian could be considered as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNew Tradition and Activism in Minoritized-Language Communities: The Time of post-2008 Asturian Music.<\/a>\u201d Lletres Asturianes<\/em>, vol. 127, October 2022, pp. 55-82.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

This paper analyzes the recovering of tradition as well as the new forms of activism and community engagement in music in Asturias following the 2008 financial crisis. Specifically, I study Rodrigo Cuevas, arguably the most recognized new musician inside and outside Asturias; \u00dan de Grao, the musical project of Xos\u00e9 Mart\u00ednez \u00c1lvarez, a member of the so-called \u00abpost-folk\u00bb generation whose main aim is to revitalize the tonada<\/em>; and the Coru Al Altu la Lleva, which, born in the environment of the association of musicians Caja de m\u00fasicos<\/em>, continues the tradition of choral music and explicitly engages in activism, both with noted Asturian musician Nacho Vegas and as an independent ensemble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent Asturian music signals new trends in its relationship to space and also to time. Musicians hope to participate globally, not by blending into any pattern, but through their local difference and through activism. Some of the issues Asturian musicians relate to are the role of the many languages and cultures that coexist in a territory, the revival of a lived past while questioning certain ideas of the previous generation, the awareness of sexual diversity, the new-rural tendency after the economic recession and the pandemic, and the rise in community activism after the Indignados <\/em>movement following the 2008 global financial crisis. Through music, Asturias and the Asturian language both participate and respond to local, national and international trends which, drawing upon tradition, create unique ways of resignifying the past and of influencing the present and the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed in http:\/\/www.musicasturiana.com<\/a>
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“Engaging the Ethics of the Future: The Aftertimes as Emotional, Material and Temporal Accumulation in the Spanish Animation Film Birdboy: The Forgotten Children<\/em><\/a>,” Humanities<\/em>, vol. 11, no. 2, Mar. 2022, p. 48. (Included in the Special Issue Socio-Environmental Emergencies and Futuristic Imaginaries in Iberian and Latin American Cinemas and Television<\/a>.)<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

In this essay I analyze the critically-acclaimed animated movie, Birdboy: The Forgotten Children<\/em> (Alberto V\u00e1zquez and Pedro Rivero, 2015) through the lens of environmental humanities. Birdboy<\/em> takes place on an island populated by anthropomorphic animals, most of them young, who live in a time after an industrial accident destroyed the livelihood of its inhabitants. Drawing on various theoretical approaches, such as Hannah Arendt’s notion of new beginnings and Timothy Morton’s sustained project of ecological critique, I study the ways Birdboy<\/em> represents time and suggests an ethics of the future. Birdboy<\/em> portrays a post-apocalyptic universe that is not detached from the past, even after a catastrophe, but always already marked by emotional, material and temporal accumulation. The movie also questions the necessity and the possibility of new beginnings if we do not engage with the complexity of nature. It ultimately focuses on the consequences that all of this has for the future: the accumulation affects the younger generation that lives in a world whose development has been exhausted but where the remains of the past have not disappeared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“La geograf\u00eda hist\u00f3rica de Mar\u00ed\u00ada Teresa Le\u00f3n en Memoria de la melancol\u00eda<\/em>” (The Historical Geography of Mar\u00eda Teresa Le\u00f3n in Memory of Melancholy<\/em>), Destierros y destiempos. Una revisi\u00f3n del exilio republicano espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/em> (Out of Place and Out of Time. A Revision of Spanish Republican Exile), edited by Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00f3n L\u00f3pez Garc\u00ed\u00ada, Mario Mart\u00ed\u00adn Gij\u00f3n and Chiara Pepe. Peter Lang, 2021, pp. 115-124.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

This essay studies Memoria de la melancol\u00ed\u00ada<\/em> (Buenos Aires, 1970), the autobiography that Spanish author and intellectual Mar\u00eda Teresa Le\u00f3n (1903-1988) wrote towards the end of her exile. In addition to being an account of the most relevant events of her life, I argue that her memoire can be considered a modern “Laus Hispaniae,” that is, a “praise of Spain,” as this genre was used by medieval authors such as Saint Isidore, Rodrigo Jim\u00e9nez de Rada and King Alfonso X of Castile. Like her medieval counterparts, Le\u00f3n laments the loss of her native land and incorporates history in her geographical descriptions of several regions in Spain. She also relates exile culture and herself to the Spanish territory and its history, and thus reasserts exiles’ cultural hegemony (a concept coined by Sebastiaan Faber) by proposing an alternative history of the country she had to abandon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“\u00bfAlabanza de Espa\u00f1a y Latinoam\u00e9rica? La representaci\u00f3n de los destinos de exilio en Memoria de la melancol\u00ed\u00ada<\/em> de Mar\u00ed\u00ada Teresa Le\u00f3n” (Praising Spain and Latin America? Representing Exile Destinations in Memory of Melancholy<\/em> by Mar\u00ed\u00ada Teresa Le\u00f3n), Destinos del exilio republicano<\/em>, edited by Fernando Vierna. Fundaci\u00f3n Bruno Alonso and Centro de Estudios Monta\u00f1eses, 2020, pp. 59-76.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

In this chapter I examine the representation of Latin American geography in Memoria de la melancol\u00ed\u00ada<\/em> (Buenos Aires, 1970), the autobiography of Spanish exile writer Mar\u00ed\u00ada Teresa Le\u00f3n (1903-1988). I have argued elsewhere (Alvarez-Sancho, 2021) that its description of Spanish geography that ties space with history follows a technique borrowed from the “Laus Hispaniae,” a medieval genre with which Le\u00f3n was very familiar and which ultimately serves to link exile culture to Spanish territory. The description of the land of her exile, however, contains a more problematic praise. In some instances, Le\u00f3n describes American geography with presentist and futuristic notes, without acknowledging its past. In some others, Le\u00f3n describes the Argentinian landscape through its historiography and inscribes her own body in it, like she does with Spain, a way of reclaiming exiles’ sense of belonging also in the land that received them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Iberofuturismo<\/em> herido: Est\u00e9tica y reinicios en Eva<\/em> (Kike Ma\u00ed\u00adllo, 2011)”<\/a> (Wounded Iberofuturism<\/em>: Aesthetics and Restarts in Eva<\/em> (Kike Ma\u00ed\u00adllo, 2011)), 452\u00ba F<\/em>, no. 21, July 2019, pp. 169-187.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

This essay analyzes the science fiction film Eva <\/em>(Ma\u00ed\u00adllo, 2011) through what I call \u00abIberofuturism\u00bb: the creation and study of cultural products and initiatives that, while relating themselves to the past and present of the panorama of Iberian Studies, deal with formulations of the future. I use the theories of Alison Landsberg and Hannah Arendt to interpret its aesthetic and its portrayal of new beginnings, and propose that Eva <\/em>offers a wounded Iberofuturism, a notion that, like the \u00abwounded culture\u00bb theorized by Cristina Moreiras, shows the hard-to-suture interstices in the relationship between past, present, and future, something that can be considered an allegory of the Spanish Transition to democracy after Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, an era that coincides with the \u00abretro\u00bb aesthetics of the movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Iberian Third Space in a Novel by a Catalan Exiled in Mexico: Language(s) in Paraules d’Opoton el Vell<\/em> by Avel\u00b7l\u00ed\u00ad Art\u00eds Gener”<\/a>. Catalan Review<\/em>, vol. 31, June 2017, pp 59-78.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

In this study I argue that the treatment of languages in the novel Paraules d’Opoton el Vell<\/em> (1968), written by the Catalan author Avel\u00b7l\u00ed\u00ad Art\u00ed\u00ads Gener during his exile in Mexico, opens a third space between Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari’s deterritorialization and Walter Mignolo’s decoloniality in a way that engages with both these ideas as it distances itself from them. Through the use of multiple languages and registers, the questioning of names, the creation of new words, and translations, Paraules d’Opoton el Vell<\/em> deterritorializes language. However, by including a multiplicity of languages, it calls into question Deleuze and Guattari’s idea that only major languages can be deterritorialized. At the same time, the variety of languages shows the colonial difference while proposing a pluriversality like the one Mignolo links to the decolonial option. Nevertheless, Paraules d’Opoton el Vell<\/em> cannot be completely lined up with decolonial criticism because its border thinking pivots around languages more than around epistemological conflicts. The third space portrayed in Paraules d’Opoton el Vell<\/em> evokes the approach proposed by Iberian studies, in between conceptualizations that critique hegemony from both a singular and a pluriversal locus of enunciation which relates to interior and exterior borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Pa negre<\/em> y los otros fantasmas de la postmemoria: El ‘phantom’ y los intertextos con La pla\u00e7a del Diamant<\/em>, El esp\u00ed\u00adritu de la colmena<\/em> y El laberinto del fauno”<\/em><\/a>. (Black Bread<\/em> and the Other Ghosts of Postmemory: The “Phantom” and Intertextuality with The Time of the Doves<\/em>, The Spirit of the Beehive<\/em> and Pan’s Labyrinth<\/em>) MLN<\/em>, vol 131, no. 2, March 2016, pp. 517-535.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

This article argues that the film Pa negre <\/em>(Villaronga, 2010) questions the recreation of intergenerational transmissions of memory after the Spanish Civil War by means of the “ghosts of history,” the traces left in the present by silenced past events, as theorized by Jo Labanyi. Pa negre<\/em> revisits the motif of the birds in La pla\u00e7a del Diamant<\/em> (Rodoreda, 1962), the hidden and monstrous characters in El esp\u00ed\u00adritu de la colmena<\/em> (Erice, 1973), and the fairy tale morphology of El laberinto del fauno<\/em> (del Toro, 2006), to show the tensions between the depiction of the ghosts of history and what I call “the other ghosts of postmemory,” a transgenerational transmission of which the affected wants to be set free in order to reaffirm their present self, which I theorize following the concept of the “phantom” developed by Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Inner Exile and Stateless National Identifications after the Spanish Civil War: Imagining the Basque Country in Ram\u00f3n Saizarbitoria’s Ehun metro”<\/em><\/a>. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies<\/em>, vol. 92, no. 1, January 2015, pp. 53-68.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

In this essay I study the representation of national identities and their relationship to inner exile in the Spanish translation of the Basque novel 100 metro<\/em>, by Ram\u00f3n Saizarbitoria, which narrates the last one hundred meters a person who is suggested to be an ETA member runs before being shot to death by the police. According to its publishers, 100 metro<\/em> is the first novel published originally in Basque that was translated into Spanish (as Cien metros<\/em>). My reading questions Paul Ilie’s concept of inner exile (exile within the borders of one’s own nation) as it applies to stateless nations within the Spanish state. Ilie’s model considers inner exile a consequence of the split in the national unity caused by territorial exile, which does not exactly line up with the experiences of minority nations within the Spanish state. For the present analysis, inner exile is redefined as a conflict between the individual and the official national discourse and is used to examine national narratives within the Basque Country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Surrealismo, representaciones hist\u00f3ricas y espacios postcoloniales en La novela del Indio Tupinamba <\/em>de Eugenio F. Granell” (Surrealism, Historical Representations and Postcolonial Spaces in The Novel of the Tupinamba Indian<\/em> by Eugenio F. Granell), Hispanic Journal<\/em>, vol 33, no. 2, Fall 2012, pp. 59-73.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

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“Mirando la naci\u00f3n desde La pla\u00e7a del Diamant<\/em> y El carrer de les Cam\u00e8lies<\/em>: Periferias e identidades en dos novelas de Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda” (Looking at the Nation from The Time of the Doves <\/em>and Camelias Street<\/em>: Peripheries and Identities in Two Novels by Merc\u00e8 Rodoreda) Tropos<\/em>, vol. 35, 2009, pp. 104-22.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

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“Libro de Alexandre<\/em>, Libro de ‘los que ruegan'” (Libro de Alexandre<\/em>, Book of “Those Who Pray”) with Ana Marco Gonz\u00e1lez, \u00c1baco digital<\/em>, 2001, n.p.<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

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Book Reviews<\/h4>\n\n\n\n