Almonte, El Rocío, Doñana

Dr. Michael Dean Murphy’s current work, in collaboration with Dr. Juan Carlos González Faraco, focuses on three principal topics, all situated in southern Spain: (1) the destabilization of ritual in the pilgrimage to Nuestra Señora del Rocío (Our Lady of the Dew) in the face of its rapid increase in scale, (2) the interaction between efforts to manage feral horses in Doñana National Park and the politics of sacred space, and (3) an examination of foreign travel narratives of the pilgrimage to Rocío’s shrine from 1858 to 1958.