# Doris Sommer Member of the Advisory Council ![Doris Sommer](/sites/g/files/omnuum1371/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/globalpoliticalthought/files/doris_gazette-1-1_0.jpg?itok=6RBpYm3i) location\_on Boylston Hall, 4th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 email laptop\_windows [Doris Sommer's profile at Harvard University](https://scholar.harvard.edu/dsommer/home) laptop\_windows [Department of African & African American Studies](https://aaas.fas.harvard.edu/people/doris-sommer) laptop\_windows [Romance Language & Literatures](https://rll-faculty.fas.harvard.edu/dorissommer/home) Doris Sommer is a humanist thinker and scholar of literature, currently Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. A formidable voice for the arts and humanities in public life and world development, she directs the [Cultural Agents Initiative](http://culturalagents.org/), an NGO dedicated to reviving the civic mission of the Humanities, and [“Pre-Texts”](https://www.pre-texts.org/), an arts-based training program for teachers of literacy, critical thinking, and citizenship, and [Renaissance Now](https://www.renaissancenow-cai.org/), a forum for rethinking culture in development. Among her books are *[Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520082854/foundational-fictions)* (1991) about novels that helped to consolidate new republics; *[Proceed with Caution when Engaged by Minority Literature](https://scholar.harvard.edu/dsommer/publications/proceed-caution-when-engaged-minority-writing-americas)* (1999) on a rhetoric of particularism; *[Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education](https://www.dukeupress.edu/bilingual-aesthetics)* (2004); and *[The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities](https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-work-of-art-in-the-world)* (2014). Her other works include *[One Master for Another: Populism as Patriarchal Rhetoric in Dominican Novels](https://scholar.harvard.edu/dsommer/publications/one-master-another-populism-patriarchal-rhetoric-dominican-novels)* (University Press of America, 1984), her edited volumes, *[Nationalisms & Sexualities ](https://www.routledge.com/Nationalisms--Sexualities/Parker-Russo-Sommer-Yaeger/p/book/9781138340909)*(Routledge, 1991), *[The Places of History Regionalism Revisited in Latin America](https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-places-of-history)* (Duke, 1999) *[Bilingual Games: Some Literary Investigations](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781403982704)* (Palgrave, 2003), *[Cultural Agency in the Americas](https://www.dukeupress.edu/cultural-agency-in-the-americas)* (Duke, 2006). Within and beyond the walls of academia, Sommer offers public services at Harvard and around the world. She co-chairs the Hispanic Seminar and the Humanitarian & Cultural Initiative at the [Mahindra Centre](https://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/), and is a member of the Executive Committee of the [David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies](https://drclas.harvard.edu/people/doris-sommer-0), the [American Studies Program](http://americanstudies.unix.fas.harvard.edu/?person=doris-sommer), the [Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR)](https://emr.fas.harvard.edu/files/ethnic/files/fy17_emr_course_booklet_final.pdf); the [Centre for Public Service and Engaged Scholarship](https://publicservice.fas.harvard.edu/people/doris-sommer) & [Global Health and Health Policy](https://ghhp.fas.harvard.edu/people/doris-sommer), [South Asia Institute](https://mittalsouthasiainstitute.harvard.edu/people/doris-sommer/), and the [Modern Language Association's Working Group on K–16 Alliances](https://www.mla.org/About-Us/Governance/Committees/Committee-Listings/Professional-Issues/Committee-on-K-16-Alliances). A globe-trotting advocate for the return of the arts & humanities to the public life, she has most recently given a lecture on the [improtance of arts and humanities to the Global Parliament of Mayors](https://globalparliamentofmayors.org/webinar/). Hear Sommer's talk[ "Cultural Agents All"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8jNDXC_hhU) @Harvard Thinks Big 4; read her cases for ["Art as Obligation and Opportunity"](https://rll-faculty.fas.harvard.edu/files/dorissommer/files/art_as_opportunity_and_obligation_collective_w_additions.pdf?m=1625667905) & ["Democracy Requests the Pleasure of Your Company"](https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2021/05/features-democracy-requests-company); find engaging reviews of Sommer's *The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities* in the *[Los Angeles Review of Books](https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/humanities/)*, [American Association of University Professors](https://www.aaup.org/article/art-change#.YXw5RmDMKUl), and the [London School of Economics blog](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2014/03/21/book-review-the-work-of-art-in-the-world-civic-agency-and-public-humanities-by-doris-sommer/). - ## People categories [Member of the Advisory Council](/people-categories/member-advisory-council)