Palmar Álvarez-Blanco

Education & Professional History

Universidad de Valladolid, Licenciada; University of Villanova, MA; University of Colorado (Boulder), PhD

Dr. Palmar Álvarez-Blanco is a professor at Carleton College, Minnesota. She is the co-founder and coordinator of the international association ALCESXXI, a space dedicated to critical, and public intervention in research, educational, and cultural areas threatened by capitalist interference.

As a cultural researcher, Palmar Álvarez-Blanco focuses on tracing the historical issues and crises inherent to the capitalist system, as well as on situated analysis and documentation of the transition towards a system based on the logic of the Commons. This work is captured in the cartography and living archive of The Commons Constellation (http://constelaciondeloscomunes.org).

In addition to numerous articles on culture and politics in academic and non-academic journals, her books include: Pequeño Tratado de amistad. Hacia una política de respeto (La Vorágine, 2023), En ruta con el común. Archivo y memoria de una posible constelación” (2017-18-19), La Imaginación Hipotecada. Aportaciones al debate sobre la precariedad en el presente (Ecologistas en Acción, 2016), and Contornos de la narrativa española actual (2000-2010). Un diálogo entre creadores y críticos (Iberoamericana, 2011).

Throughout her career at Carleton, Professor Alvarez-Blanco has continued to explore new ways to grow as a teacher, scholar, and engaged community member. Her teaching portfolio includes courses on Civic engagement, and participatory video, and co-curation of traveling exhibitions in the USA: Welcome to the World and Satirical and Political Graphics in the Modern World. In 2020 professor Alvarez-Blanco was selected for the Mellon Periclean to Faculty Leadership Program to incorporate civic engagement into the curriculum.  This award supported the creation of ‘Radio and News in Spanish,’ an Academic Civic Engagement (ACE) course co-designed and co-taught with community partners Lucy Gonzalez Miron, Tayde Rodriguez, Marlene Rojas and Mar Valdecantos (founders and managers of the Northfield community radio program “El Súper Barrio Latino”). As a Periclean Faculty Leader, Professor Alvarez-Blanco joined a community of scholars dedicated to incorporating civic engagement into the curriculum while empowering students to use their academic knowledge to tackle real-world problems.

In addition to being the architect, curator and creator of the Constellation of the Commons —an audiovisual open-access archive concerning self-managed communities of practice that have emerged over the past decade, spurred on by the exposure of the neoliberal financial sham within the Spanish territory. —, she is the author of the book Pequeño tratado de amistad. Hacia una política de respeto (2023) and she has coordinated and co-edited and coordinated two collective volumes: Contornos de la narrativa española actual (2000-2010). Un diálogo entre creadores y críticos (2011) y La imaginación hipotecada. Aportaciones al debate sobre la precariedad del presente (2017). A paper version of her latest work In Route with the Commons. Memory and Archive of a Possible Constellation (2017-18-19) can be ordered here.