Raśl Rubio

Professor Raúl Rubio received his doctorate degree in U.S. Latino and Latin American Studies from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University in New Orleans. He is a graduate of Middlebury College Language Schools (Madrid) and was a visiting professor at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia before arriving at Wellesley College in 2003. He teaches language and literature courses, among them, Caribbean Literature and Culture, U.S. Hispanic Literature, and Hispanic Theater and Performance.

His research bridges literature, cinema, and performance by examining themes such as Latino/a identities, community formation, and the arts. His publications include work on Cuban nationalism, gender politics in Brazilian culture, and Caribbean chronicle and travel discourses. His research approaches popular cultural production by situating it within anthropological and sociological theories that pertain to the economies of culture, spectatorship, and cultural marketability.

Professor Rubio is currently preparing a book manuscript based on his doctoral dissertation which was titled “Discourses on Cuban Nationalism: Havana and Revolution in Print, Media, and Popular Cultures” (Tulane, 2004). His research includes journal publications on Cuban material culture, the literary performative of black Cuban culture, gender politics in Brazilian Cinema, and queer Latino/a performance. His second book project is an anthology on the performance of ethnicity, specifically Latinity, in the United States, proposing stand-up comedy as activism.

Professor Rubio is involved in multiple social and cultural arenas, among them, the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives and The Carter Center. He has travelled to Cuba on two occasions, once serving as part of the U.S. Catholic delegation to Cuba during Pope John Paul II's visit to Havana in 1998, and in 2000 in order to complete research on his dissertation. Rubio has lectured widely on Cuba and Cuban-Americans specifically on the global economies of Cuban culture.