Doris Sommer

Doris Sommer is Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, African and African American Studies, and Social Studies at Harvard University, where she is also Associate of the Bloomberg Center for Cities, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the Mittal Institute for South Asia. Sommer grew up in a mostly Puerto Rican immigrant neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn, NYC, which fostered her appreciation for cosmopolitan – multilingual and adaptive - identities.  Her childhood among people of various backgrounds demonstrated how culture can connect people or keep them apart. In response, her career as an academic and activist is dedicated to reviving the civic mission of the Humanities: to develop appreciation for beauty, interpretive agility, and admiration for various perspectives. Resisting the pall of pessimism that characterizes many academic environments, she founded the “Cultural Agents Initiative” at Harvard and its public-facing NGO Cultural Agents Inc. Combining academic and outreach work Cultural Agents has developed a range of activities with two principal programs: “The Arts and Policy Certificate”—for cities to engage participatory arts as practical resources for addressing complex challenges—and the “Pre-Texts” pedagogy. This train-the-trainers protocol, with decades of practice in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, enlists local arts to stimulate literacy, critical thinking, and citizenship in classrooms and in boardrooms [For details about the methodology and archives country by country, consult the website]. A new program, “Pilgrims for the Planet” – with pilot projects in Nuquí, Colombia, and Ahmadabad, India—affects hearts and minds of decision-makers who accompany scholars and local leaders on walks to witness contamination and deforestation.

Among Sommer's 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 promotes good public-school education, including the public-facing Pre-Texts program for LASA (Latin American Studies Association). She has a B.A. from New Jersey's Douglass College for Women, and Ph.D. from Rutgers the State University. Her distinctions include a Guggenheim Award (1994), membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 2025), and a doctorate Honoris Causa from the Universidad de Oviedo (2026). ---- [DS1]Vincular solo Harvard University, azul subrayado.

[DS2]Quitar la direccion entre parentesis y dejar Cultural Agents Initiative en azul subrayado y vinclado.

[DS3]Quitar la direccion entre parentesis y dejar Cultural Agents Inc. en azul subrayado y vinclado.

[DS4]Quitar la direccion entre parentesis y dejar The Arts and Policy Certificate en azul subrayado y vinclado.

[DS5]Quitar la direccion entre parentesis y dejar Pre-Texts  en azul subrayado y vinclado.

[DS6]Vincular en azul subrayado con <nowiki>https://culturalagents.org/caminos-de-paz-pilgrims-for-peace/</nowiki>

Works

• One Master for Another: Populism as Patriarchal Rhetoric in Dominican Novels (University Press of America, 1984)
• ed. with Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, and Patricia Yaeger, Nationalisms & Sexualities (Routledge, 1991)
• Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (University of California Press, 1991); in Spanish: Ficciones fundacionales: La novela nacional en América Latina (FCE, 2005)
• Yo-Yo Boing!: Either And with Alex Vega Merino (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1998).
• ed. The Places of History: Regionalism Revisited in Latin America (Duke University Press, 1999)
• Proceed with Caution, when engaged by minority writing in the Americas (Harvard University Press, 1999); in Spanish: Abrazos y rechazos: Cómo leer en clave menor (FCE, 2006)
• ed. Bilingual Games (Palgrave, 2003)
• Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education (Duke University Press, 2004)
• ed. Cultural Agency in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2006)
• The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (Duke University Press, 2014)

References