general interest
The Work of Art in the World Civic Agency and Public Humanities doris sommer Celebrating art and interpretation
Doris Sommer is the Ira and Jewell Williams Jr. Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, where she is Founder and Director of Cultural Agents: Arts and Humanities in Civic Engagement. She is the author of Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education and editor of Cultural Agency in the Americas, both also published by Duke University Press.
that take on social challenges, Doris Sommer steers the humanities back to engagement with the world. The reformist projects that focus her attention develop momentum and meaning as they circulate through society to inspire faith in the possible. Among the cases that she covers are top-down iniThe Work of Art
in the
World
Civic Agency and Public Humanities
tiatives of political leaders, such as those launched by Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, and also bottom-up movements like the Theatre
“The Work of Art in the World is a ringing manifesto
of the Oppressed created by the Brazilian doris sommer
for public art as an agent of democratic change. Doris
director, writer, and educator Augusto Boal. Alleging that we are all cultural
Sommer traces the connections between art, activism, and social transformation in communities from Buenos
agents, Sommer also takes herself to task and creates Pre-Texts, an international
Aires to the South Bronx, framing the surprising and
arts-literacy project that translates high literary theory through popular creative
stirring art practices that she describes in relation to
practices. The Work of Art in the World is informed by many writers and
the vital traditions of aesthetics and democratic political
theorists. Foremost among them is the eighteenth-century German poet and
theory. Her aim is to stimulate civic discussion and
philosopher Friedrich Schiller, who remains an eloquent defender of art-making
communicative action; her book is revelatory, alive, and inspiring.”—KATHLEEN WOODWARD , author
and humanistic interpretation in the construction of political freedom. Schiller’s
of Statistical Panic: Cultural Politics and Poetics of the
thinking runs throughout Sommer’s modern-day call for citizens to collaborate
Emotions
in the endless co-creation of a more just and more beautiful world.
“This remarkable book is both a unique introduction to, and an informed and passionate argument for, socially engaged art. Doris Sommer not only illuminates the objectives, methods, forms, effects, and contexts of civic art but also radically expands the ways we see and think about art in general.”—KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO ,
also by Doris Sommer
artist and Professor of Art, Design, and the Public Domain at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
Cultural Agency in the Americas
10
Doris Sommer, editor
Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education
paper, $26.95/£18.99
paper, $23.95/£16.99
978–0–8223–3499–6 / 2006
978–0–8223–3344–9 / 2004
ARTS & HUMANITIES
January 240 pages, 14 photographs paper, 978–0–8223–5586–1, $22.95/£15.99 cloth, 978–0–8223–5572–4, $79.95/£64.00