Alternative Cultures: Visions of Futurity in Rural Asturias

Once best known for its cows and coal mines, the Spanish region of Asturias has become a cultural capital in recent years. Rural pueblos are at the epicenter of this renaissance, challenging urban-centric ideas of cultural production. Musicians, writers, and other artists look to the region’s agrarian and industrial past to imagine new futures. They incorporate folklore and ways of knowing inspired by older generations, constructing alternative notions of rurality grounded in queerness, inclusivity, and sustainability. What possibilities might flourish in these new visions of rural Spain?

Presented by Luke Bowe, Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish at Virginia Tech. Luke’s interdisciplinary research focuses on film, literature, music, and cultural history in Spain from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, with a specific emphasis on the enduring impact of the Franco dictatorship on Asturias. Drawing on ecocriticism, labor history, queer theory, and rural studies, he engages with discourses surrounding the past, present, and future of Spain through an understudied regional perspective.