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Bio

Curriculum Vitae
 

Academic Degrees: A.B., Douglas College, NJ; M.A., Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ph.D., Rutgers University

Research Interests: 19th-Century Narrative in Latin American Women's Literature; Ethnic Literature; Bilingual Aesthetics

Doris Sommer is Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies. She is founder of "Cultural Agents," an Initiative at harvard and an NGO dedicated to reviving the civic mission of the Humanities. Her academic and outreach work promotes development through arts and humanities, specifically through “Pre-Texts” in Boston Public Schools, throughout Latin America and beyond. Pre-Texts is an arts-based training program for teachers of literacy, critical thinking, and citizenship. Among her books are Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (1991) about novels that helped to consolidate new republics; Proceed with Caution when Engaged by Minority Literature (1999) on a rhetoric of particularism; Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education (2004) for our times of contested immigration; and The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (2014). Sommer has enjoyed and is dedicated to developing good public school education. She has a B.A. from New Jersey's Douglass College for Women, and Ph.D. from Rutgers University.   

 
Director of Cultural Agents, DRCLAS; American Studies; EMR; Public Service; Public Health; SAI; MLA Working Group on
 

See Prof. Sommer's talk: "Cultural Agents All" from Harvard Thinks Big

RENAISSANCE NOW - Art is our Renewable Human Resource

Renaissance Now, Co-founder, see  http://renaissancenow-cai.org/ 

 

Announcements: 

  • launching of the "Arts and Policy City Certificate" in Mannheim, Asuncion, and Santiago
  • New Freshmen seminar "The 'Ignorant Schoolmaster' and the Experts'' (Fall 2022)
  • New cultural Agents project: "Renaissance Now"

Contact for details

Essays:

"Art as Opportunity and Obligation"  

 

Lectures, selected:

 

Memberships, selected:

  • Engine for Art Democracy and Justice, Director Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, Vanderbilt University
  • Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (Vienna, Austria) 
  • Pedagogy Committee of JEP (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, Colombia)
  • Pre-Texts Capacity builder for SEP (Secretaria de Educacion Publica) México; Ibby, Harvard Libraries, City of Mannheim, Law Schools, Paraguay, among others.