Raul Rubio © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 

Pioneros: Building Cuba’s Socialist Childhood. September 17 to October 1, 2015. Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, Parsons School of Design/The New School.  An unprecedented exhibition of the material world of childhood in Cuba through the decades of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The exhibition explores the relationship between the political and the material orders, offering a portrait of the effects of global and national politics on the material environment and in everyday life, as well as of the impermeability and resilience of some individual and collective practices to politics. More than 200 objects like toys, furniture, books, clothing, appliances, and children ephemera, designed for or used by Cuban children in the decades of the 1960s through the 1980s, will be exhibited along with old photographs obtained through Facebook and other social media, or directly contributed by their owners. They will attest to both the efforts of the Cuban state to shape a socialist “new” man and the individual tactics to resist them (stressing the role that objects played in these processes). The exhibition, co-curated by sociologist Maria A. Cabrera Arus and art historian Meyken Barreto.

Raul Rubio

​​ Raúl with colleague

Florence Leclerc-Dickler, Dean of Parsons Paris  

​​RAÚL RUBIO @ THE NEW SCHOOL

At The New School, Raúl, and his Languages Department colleagues, have endeavored to reimagine and re-envision the role(s) Languages play at the university, in a wide-range of areas, including: an improved system of Coordination of the Language Programs, continued development of full-time and part-time faculty, a revised department curriculum (course models), a review of the four language studies Minors offered by the department, the approval and implementation of Graduate Minors in Chinese Studies, French Studies, Japanese Studies, and Hispanic Studies, university-wide curricular planning and articulations with Milano, Parsons, Lang, and the College of Performing Arts (COPA), spearheaded exploratory Study Abroad options, and conducted an Online Synchronous Pilot (now entering its 5th year during AY 20-21) for introductory courses in Japanese, French, and Spanish (with Chinese initiated in AY 18-19). He has served on the University Curriculum Committee (UCC) since 2016, and on University’s Honorary Degree Committee (2 cycles) and from 2015-2019 as part of the Executive Committee (EC) of the School of Undergraduate Studies and collaborated with the initiatives of The Observatory on Latin America (OLA). More recently, upon the re-organization of the Languages Program, Raúl has served in Schools of Public Engagement's School’s Council and the Executive Dean's Office Leadership Committee.

Raúl’s teaching portfolio has included courses in and beyond the Languages Department, including Professional Spanish (2016), Foundations of Gender Studies (2016, 2017), Cuba Now! Arts and Society (2016, 2018), Comparative Ethnic Studies in the Americas (2016), (a comparative research methods course, which intended to serve students approaching ethnic studies from a wide-range of fields and disciplines), and more recently NEW courses, Storytelling in Spanish (2018, 2019) and Latin American Film & Media (2018). He taught a new course in Spring 2020, titled “Latinx Lives” which was contextualized in relation to current day topics associated with Latinx communities in the US, broaching issues related to the term "Latinx" itself as well topics related to bilingualism and biculturalism in film/TV, new media, and literature. Also new to his teaching repertoire is the course “Latinx Media” which was offered synchronously via Zoom in Fall 2020.