Professor Rabin's dissertation at Yale University (1993) was on the Petrarchan poetics of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Her research on Spanish American literary and visual culture includes articles on ekphrastic poetry and cultural identity in Sor Juana, and the modernista poets. Her current research concerns the twentieth-century history of US heritage language (HL) education and its speakers. She also writes on critical service-learning, including co-authored articles on social activist programs she and her colleagues have developed in Northern Virginia.