Office Hours: Away for Spring 2012

Research and Teaching

Professor Robbins teaches courses on Brazil and the Caribbean, including “Race and Culture in the ‘Hispanic’ Caribbean” (Spring 2010), “Cannibalism” (Spring 2011), “Introduction to Brazilian Cinema” (Spring 2011), “Latin American Audio Cultures:  Theories and Practices” (Fall 2011), “Rhyme, Rhythm, and Verse in Brazil” (Fall 2012), and “Regarding Gringos” (Spring 2013).  His research interests include the cultural and theoretical production of these regions, in addition to that of the African Diasporas in general, with particular concern for intellectual and cultural histories, media, cinema, and popular music.  His work is supported by archival research in Brazil as a Fulbright-Hays fellow at the Cinemateca Brasileira and the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, and in Cuba at the ICAIC, the Biblioteca Nacional, and Casa de las Américas.  He has published on Cuban cinema, in addition to Walt Disney and Sergei Eisenstein, and is presently carrying out research related to visual culture and war in the United States in 1898 for a volume edited by Beatriz González Stephan, Cultura visual e innovaciones tecnológicas en América Latina (Editorial Iberoamericana, Vervuert Verlag).  His English translations of essays by the Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chaui appear in the English-language anthology of her work Between Conformity and Resistance:  Essays on Politics, Culture, and the State published by Palgrave Macmillan.  He is also working on his book manuscript, Discordant Orders:  Popular Music, Citizenship, and Intellectual Authority in Brazil and Cuba, which examines four key periods in the emergence of contemporary relationships between popular music, cultural policy, and lettered culture.