PUBLICATIONS

Ethnic Resonances in Performance, Literature, and Identity
Editors: Yiorgos Kalogeras and Cathy C. Waegner
London: Taylor & Francis, 2020

ISBN: 978-0367859916

Raul's  Chapter: Whereas an active global Cuban diaspora has, for close to 60  years, produced a large corpus of dissident and exilic texts outside of  Cuba, any type of artistic transgression or creative dissidence inside  of Cuba continues to be illegal, persecuted, and dangerous, with little  improvement over the repressive era associated with the 1960s–1980s.  These acts, whether taken by a peaceful Cuban women’s organization, a  global hip-hop rapper, an internationally coveted performance and  mixed-media artist, or a typical citizen expressing his or her personal  opinions to a video camera, are still considered counter  revolutionary in the current Cuban context, even after Fidel Castro’s  death in the fall of 2016 and improved relations between the United  States and Cuba during the second term of the Obama administration. This  chapter interweaves contemporary cases that demonstrate Cuban  disobedience with D. Travers Scott’s concept of dynamic resonance in  contrast to static intertextuality to reflect the ever-amplifying  connections among actions of dissent, various forms of media, and viral  dissemination. A controversial film and novel by the Cabrera Infante  brothers in the 1960s are examined as influential for AfroCuban  emplacement, representation, and subsequent self-making of artistic  activism. The chapter provides a contemporary approach to AfroCuban  performance of nationality and mediated dissidence in order to  contextualize the continued trajectory of AfroCuban discrimination and  persisting racial inequity in current Cuba. Whether or not broader  access to the Internet as of 2018 and a revised national constitution  (ratified February 2019) will improve the situation of the disadvantaged  AfroCubans remains to be seen.

Volume  Description: This volume seeks to weave applications of the dynamic  concept of resonance to ethnic studies. Resonance refers to the ever  broadening, multidirectional effects of movement or action, a concept  significant for many disciplines. The individual chapters exchange the  concept of static "intertextuality" for that of interactive "resonance,"  which encourages consideration of the mutual and processual influences  among readings, paradigms, and social engagement in cultural analysis.  International scholars of literary and cultural studies, linguistics,  history, politics, or ethno-environmental studies contribute their work  in this volume. Each chapter examines a specific ethnic phenomenon in  terms of relevant literature, lived experience and theoretical  approaches, or historical intervention, relating the given case study to  parameters of resonance. The book offers dialogic transnational  interchange, a play of eclectic ethnic voices, inquiries, perspectives,  and differences. The studies in this interdisciplinary volume show that –  through resonant engagement with(in) and between works – literary  production can both enhance and disturb cultural narratives of  ethnicity.

Identidad y Postnacionalismo en la Cultura Cubana
Editors: Laura Alonso Gallo & Belén Rodríguez Mourelo
Valencia: Aduana Vieja, 2019

ISBN: 978-8494954689

Raul's  Chapter: “Cuban Emotions: Virtual and Material Storytelling in a  Postnational Era” which appeared in the book Identidad y  Postnacionalismo en la cultura cubana (Aduana Vieja, 2019) edited by  Laura P. Alonso Gallo (Barry University) and Belén Rodríguez Mourelo  (PENN State University). In the chapter Rubio proposes that the concept  of postnational has been taking traction over the last decade and is  nascent within critical studies on global migrations, and particularly  applicable to the Americas, Latinx Studies, and beyond. He considers it  timely to broach and apply this framework to the case of Cuba in the  twenty-first century as we approach 2020. Cuba has continued to be  subject to almost sixty years of disjuncture given the socio-political  positionality of the island. As such, in his analysis of artificial  texts, via cyberspace, using a wide-range of technological platforms, a  virtual nation has been forged. Equally relevant to the study, consumer  objects (material goods) and entertainment have also become the  junctures and spaces through which Cuban diasporic citizens connect. As a  result his study proposes to encapsulate the formats, textures, and  meanings of “emotional” charge in a set of cultural texts, including,  transmedia, consumer-driven material objects, and site-specific texts.

Volume  Description: This anthology is an invitation to think about the concept  of belonging in contemporary terms, under the prisms of globalization,  advances in communications and migratory movements. The authors present a  compilation of texts that address the complex issue of Cuban identity  interpreted from different contexts, with a global and post-national  vision that goes beyond borders, opening to a current perception and, as  a consequence, to thematic and cultural universes related to the  reality of our time. Scholars featured in the book, include: Ruth Behar  (University of Michigan); Nivia Montenegro (Pomona College); Rafael  Rojas (El Colegio de México); Enrico Mario Santí (University of  Kansas), among others. 

Reading Cuba: Literary Discourse and Transcultural Geography   
Editor: Alberto Sosa Cabanas 

Valencia: Aduana Vieja, 2018 

ISBN: 9788494640728

Raul's  Chapter: An individual’s encounter with food creates memories, not only  because ingestion is so sensorial but also because the acts of cooking,  eating protocols, and sharing those experiences with others are equally  memorialized.  Place also prefigures in these memories, given that  spatial-temporal memories, especially those that involve home and  homeland, are associated with the nostalgic functions that these food  encounters hold. Food memories are also continuously performed through  our bodies, via day to day practices, via nostalgic trips to the past,  as performed in our daily lives, and these practices supply the life  narratives that individuals perform in any creative format chosen,  whether writing, painting, collecting, or simply cooking. This essay  entertains the idea of  “memorializing” the nation through the  production and consumption of  food as an act of remembering and  reconstructing the national, extraterritorially. ​

Volume  Description: This bilingual volume compiles critical essays by  scholars who invite readers to rethink their notions of the Cuban nation  through a geographical lens considering exilic and diasporic realities.  The anthology features prominent literary and cultural critics,  including: Eliana Rivero, Rafael Rojas, Laura Alonso Gallo, Belén  Rodriguez Mourelo, Santiago Juan-Navarro, and Vitalina Alfonso.​

Volume  Description: This anthology is an invitation to think about the concept  of belonging in contemporary terms, under the prisms of globalization,  advances in communications and migratory movements. The authors present a  compilation of texts that address the complex issue of Cuban identity  interpreted from different contexts, with a global and post-national  vision that goes beyond borders, opening to a current perception and, as  a consequence, to thematic and cultural universes related to the  reality of our time. Scholars featured in the book, include: Ruth Behar  (University of Michigan); Nivia Montenegro (Pomona College); Rafael  Rojas (El Colegio de México); Enrico Mario Santí (University of  Kansas), among others. 

Racial and Ethnic Identities in the Media
Editors:  Eleftheria Arapoglou, University of California, Davis; Yiorgos  Kalogeras, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece; Jopi Nyman,  University of Eastern Finland
Palgrave, 2016.

ISBN: 978-1-137-56834-2

Raúl's  Chapter:  Humor, in general, and stand-up comedy particularly, are  popular and powerful mediums in contemporary culture. Rubio studies this  art form based on both the textual analysis of comedic material and on  the impact of this material throughout mediated means.  He engages in  the use of existent theoretical approaches based on the stand-up comedy  genre, in connection with mediated expressions pertaining to queer  ethnicity, sexuality, and citizenship. He argues that queer stand-up  comedy, beyond entertaining, serves as a catalyst that mediates the  understanding of differences.  Both performers and their performances  are catalysts of change. He studies the differences  between experiencing live performance and the alternative that of  accessing these performances via archived formats, most notably TV, the  Internet, or recorded performances. Rubio broaches those pertaining to  ethnicity and sexuality as observed in the work of queer stand-up  comedians.

​Volume  Description: This volume examines the role and representation of ‘race’  and ethnicity in the media with particular emphasis on the United  States. It highlights contemporary work that focuses on changing  meanings of racial and ethnic identity as they are represented in the  media; television and film, digital and print media are under  examination. Through fourteen innovative and interdisciplinary case  studies written by a team of internationally based contributors,  including Robert Stam (NYU), Ella Shohat (NYU), as well as renowned list  of media scholars and practitioners, the volume identifies ways in  which ethnic, racial, and national identities have been produced,  reproduced, stereotyped, and contested. It showcases new emerging  theoretical approaches in the field, and pays particular attention to  the role of race, ethnicity, and national identity, along with communal  and transnational allegiances, in the making of identities in the media.  The topics of the chapters range from immigrant newspapers and gangster  cinema to ethnic stand-up comedy and the use of ‘race’ in advertising.

Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts: New Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Social Change
Editors: Mauricio A. Font & Araceli Tinajero
Routledge, 2014.

ISBN: 978-1-61205-679-1

Raul's  Chapter: The goal of “Cuban Ethnicities in Cinematic Context,  1930s-1950s” is to consider the meanings behind the display of ethnicity  as represented in three films that span the 1930s-50s, the latter part  of Cuba’s Era as a Republic (1902-1959). While examining the potential  meanings of these representations and their formats, Rubio explores how  the urban realm, Havana, also plays an important role in these  depictions. The three films analyzed in this piece, El Romance del  Palmar (Cuba, 1938), El Mariachi Desconocido (Tin Tan en La Habana)  (Mexico, 1953), and Week-end in Havana (US, 1941), bring to the table  three different national perspectives on Cuba pertaining to the  1930s-1950s.  All three, however, partake in demonstrating the use of  ethnicity as common practice and as a nuanced stylistic practice within  the popular culture of those times. The films and their respective  perspectives offer a window into the socio-political situation of ethnic  citizens in Cuba and the societal treatment they received. 

Volume Description: The Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts: New Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Social Change (2014)  edited by scholars Mauricio A. Font & Araceli Tinajero features  research by leading academics from Cuba, the United States, and Europe.  It is organized as collection of both discipline-based and  interdisciplinary research from a wide-range of interconnected fields  that span the social sciences and the humanities.  The handbook’s  purpose is to offer new perspectives on the historical archive, the  literary and artistic canons, while embarking on the analysis of new  contemporary interventions related to cultural and social activism.

Author: Raúl Rubio
Aduana Vieja, 2013.

ISBN: 9788496846845    

Raul's monograph La Habana: cartografías culturales examines  the worldwide fascination with Cuba and things Cuban during the last  century, particularly envisioning how the city of Havana, is more than a  scenic backdrop, having become the nation’s most visible protagonist  and its foremost player, perhaps second only to Fidel Castro. It offers a  cutting-edge approach to the intersections between Cuban politics,  ideology, national identity, and artistic production, both on and off  the island. Organized through studies on a wide-range of artistic  mediums, including literature, film, photography, and material products  that are manufactured not only in Cuba but also globally, the book  offers an alternative take on the complex state of contemporary Cuban  national identity. Raúl  employs the perspective that, given Havana’s isolated reality, it is  the city’s image, a simulated cartography, what has become highly  desired and perpetually reproduced by media and cultural  sources. Havana, in that light, is therefore mostly accessible to the  world through artificial means, mechanically reproduced as nuanced  copies of the real city. The  monograph is the culmination of Raúl’s long-range research on Havana’s  symbolic appearance in Cuban-oriented cultural production of the last  century. The book features both previously published scholarship that  originally appeared in English between 2005-2012 and new research based  on recent theoretical approaches and analysis related to  Raúl's long-range interest in Cuban material cultures.

Living with Class:  Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture
Editors: Ron Scapp and Brian Seitz
Palgrave, 2013.

ISBN: 978-1-137-32681-2

Raúl's  Chapter: What is "class" given the new realities which entail living  in imaginative or artificial worlds that span global enterprise, social  media, and the meanings associated with capital?  Meanwhile, how do  theories associated with Deborah Stone's concept of the polis that  consider the meanings of community, social consciousness, civic  responsibility, and sustainability reconceptualize class today?  What is  class anyway? Is consuming "class" an act of empowerment? How is class  consumed?  It the consumption of things and access to places and  knowledge significant of consuming power?  My premise is that in the  ongoing era of consumption, class is power, and consumption is power,  and therefore the existent practice is that class is gained through  consumption.

Volume Description: It is clear that the world is in conflict about the status (quo) of capital. Living With Class: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Material Culture addresses  and reflects upon the many different ways in which and through which we  find ourselves struggling, surviving, and thriving today. The  contributors offers diverse considerations, 'ethnophilosophies,' about  the force, subtleties, and consequences of the many different ways that  capitalism, wealth, and poverty continue to dominate our lives and  influence our sense of identity, our understanding of material culture,  and our continued maintenance of class status. Following the current  debates about wealth and class and the longing for a new discursive  engagement with this historically defined concept, they examine the  social and cultural phenomena of class from a uniquely innovative  philosophical approach and reconsider certain philosophical "givens"  within the context of culture in the broadest sense of the word,  experientially and theoretically. Anthology contributors include: Henry  Giroux, bell hooks, and Stanley Aronowitz.

Narratología y discursos múltiples: Homenaje a David William Foster
Editors: Daniel Altamiranda and Diana B. Salem.
Editorial Dunken, 2013.
ISBN: 978-987-02-6412-5

Raúl's Chapter:​ El  glamour es evasivo pero los matices de su significado contienen un  valor y un capital incalculable para sus creadores y seguidores. Este  capítulo propone que el concepto de glamour sirve como un vehículo  mediante el cual se realiza y se representa la identidad y la  sexualidad. Por medio de una lectura analítica del libro Morir de glamour: crónica de la sociedad de fin de siglo por el venezolano Boris Izaguirre, examino el modo en que los conceptos  de subjetividad y colectividad de la identidad desempeñan un papel en  la naturaleza del glamour. 

Volume Description:  Narratología y discursos múltiples: Homenaje a David William Foster (Dunken,  2013) gathers scholarship that has been influenced by the theoretical  work of Professor David William Foster, Arizona State University,  whose scholarship on alternative identities, sexuality, and marginality,  has greatly impacted Latin American literary and cultural studies  during the last forty years. The anthology features a jury-vetted and  peer-reviewed selection of the papers that were presented at the 2011  International Symposium offered by the Centro de Estudios de  Narratología (CEN) in Buenos Aires at the Biblioteca Nacional. Among the  collaborators from Spain, Argentina, and the United States, are  Gabriela Cittadini (Fundación Internacional Jorge Luis Borges), Daniel  Halcombe (Arizona State University), and Jean Graham-Jones (The Graduate  Center, CUNY).

Cuba: Idea of a Nation Displaced
Editor: Andrea Herrera
SUNY, 2007.
ISBN: 978-0-7914-7199-9

Raul's  Chapter:  The chapter "Framing the Cuban Diaspora" recapitulates and  analyzes a select group of contemporary filmic productions that frame  the Cuban diasporic experience, through an analysis of the following  categories of films: non-Cuban, foreign films; diasporic films produced  outside the island; US ethnic films produced by Cuban Americans; and  Cuban films that dialogue with and about the diaspora. The films  analyzed in the chapter portray the Cuban diaspora as fluid, ongoing  and, at times, elusive, countering the purported “official” Cuban exile  discourse that has been traditionally associated with Cuban Miami.

Volume Description: Cuba: Idea of Nation Displaced (SUNY,  2007) features contributions by internationally recognized artists,  philosophers, and writers who reflect on the idea of a diasporic and  displaced nation. Through a comprehensive portrayal of perspectives,  inclusive of academic essays, testimonials, interviews, and literary  pieces, the collection vividly re-examines what it means to be Cuban in a  transnational context. The editor, Andrea Herrera, is Professor of  Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and the  contributors include renowned scholars, Isabel Álvarez Borland, Antonio  Benítez-Rojo, María Cristina García, William Navarrete, Eliana  Rivero, Rafael Rojas, and Carlos Victoria. The collection gives voice to  the complex and often-antagonistic cultural-political debates  coexisting within the Cuban exile population. As a multi-voiced text,  the anthology formulates a deeper understanding of diasporic identity,  and broadens the discussion of the manner in which Cuban cultural  identity and nationhood have been constructed, negotiated, and  transformed by physical and cultural displacement.