Background
Doris Sommer was born on January 15, 1947, in Germany. She is a daughter of Julius and Adela Sommer.
Doris Sommer
Doris Sommer
Tina Pippin, Doris Sommer, Vialla Henderson-Mendez
Doris Sommer
Doris Sommer. Photo by Mateo Rudas
Doris Sommer
Doris Sommer
Doris Sommer
(National consolidation and romantic novels go hand in han...)
National consolidation and romantic novels go hand in hand in Latin America. Foundational Fictions shows how 19th century patriotism and heterosexual passion historically depend on one another to engender productive citizens.
https://www.amazon.com/Foundational-Fictions-National-Romances-Literature-ebook/dp/B003BVJ9CU/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(Nationalisms and Sexualities addresses questions of how n...)
Nationalisms and Sexualities addresses questions of how notions of identity are shaped by discussions of nationalism and sexuality. The book looks at a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, on a wide range of geographical regions and historical moments. The volume departs from social scientific paradigms that treat nation and sexuality as discrete and autonomous entities. Its contributors respond instead to emerging issues that redefine the horizons of what is globally considered today as "the political": how the formation of sexual, gendered, racial, and/or class identities have contributed to the formation of sexual, gendered, racial, and/or class identities, and vice versa; how technologies of representation play a role in the constitution of national and sexual identities; how colonialism and postcolonialism have altered consolidations of national and sexual identities.
https://www.amazon.com/Nationalisms-Sexualities-Routledge-Revivals-Andrew-ebook/dp/B07SQ41GLV/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(In a series of daring forays, from seventeenth-century In...)
In a series of daring forays, from seventeenth-century Inca Garcilaso de la Vega to Julio Cortázar and Mario Vargas Llosa, Doris Sommer shows how ethnically marked texts use enticing and frustrating language games to keep readers engaged with difference: Gloria Estefan's syncopated appeal to solidarity plays on Whitman's undifferentiated ideal; unrequitable seductions echo through Rigoberta Menchú's protestations of secrecy, Toni Morrison's interrupted confession, the rebuffs in a Mexican testimonial novel. In these and other examples, Sommer trains us to notice the signs that affirm a respectful distance as a condition of political fairness and aesthetic effect - warnings that will be audible (and engaging for readings that tolerate difference) once we listen for a rhetoric of particularism.
https://www.amazon.com/Proceed-Caution-Engaged-Minority-Americas/dp/0674536606
1999
(Responding to the pressures of current theoretical trends...)
Responding to the pressures of current theoretical trends toward models of cultural globalization, the essays collected here bring a historical focus to literary studies. They suggest that only by exploring the particularities of regional historical cultures can the multiple meanings of American identities be understood. Representing a broad range of contemporary criticism, this volume features many short essays by the most well-known and respected Latin Americanists, each devoting attention to specific matters of history. The topics range from Incan architecture to Chicano and Nuyorican habitats; from turn of the century Argentine criminology to Caribbean homophobia; from the rhetorics of independence and dictatorship to Mexican ambivalence about opera and Brazil’s move beyond monarchy; and from the precarious survival of Spanish language in Latin America to its paradoxical legacy of enlightenment in the Philippines. Originally published as a special issue of Modern Language Quarterly (June 1996), this expanded edition includes a new introduction by Doris Sommer and a new essay by Vincente Rafael. Viewed together, these essays reveal a cultural richness that is sure to interest literary scholars and Latin Americanists alike.
https://www.amazon.com/Places-History-Regionalism-Revisited-America-ebook/dp/B00HFFCISK/?tag=2022091-20
1999
(These essays bring home the most challenging observations...)
These essays bring home the most challenging observations of postmodernism - multiple identities, the fragility of meaning, the risks of communication. Sommer asserts that many people normally live - that is, think, feel, create, reason, persuade, laugh - in more than one language. She claims that traditional scholarship (aesthetics; language and philosophy; psychoanalysis, and politics) cannot see or hear more than one language at a time. The goal of these essays is to create a new field: bilingual arts & aesthetics which examine the aesthetic product produced by bilingual diasporic communities. The focus of this volume is the Americas, but examples and theoretical proposals come from Europe as well. In both areas, the issue offers another level of complexity to the migrant and cosmopolitan character of local societies in a global economy.
https://www.amazon.com/Bilingual-Games-Some-Literary-Investigations/dp/1403960119/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(In Bilingual Aesthetics Sommer invites readers to make mi...)
In Bilingual Aesthetics Sommer invites readers to make mischief with meaning, to play games with language, and to allow errors to stimulate new ways of thinking. Today’s global world has outgrown any one-to-one correlation between a people and a language; liberal democracies can either encourage difference or stifle it through exclusionary policies. Bilingual Aesthetics is Sommer’s passionate call for citizens and officials to cultivate difference and to realize that the precarious points of contact resulting from mismatches between languages, codes, and cultures are the lifeblood of democracy, as well as the stimulus for aesthetics and philosophy.
https://www.amazon.com/Bilingual-Aesthetics-Sentimental-Education-Public/dp/0822333449/?tag=2022091-20
2004
("Cultural agency" refers to a range of creative activitie...)
"Cultural agency" refers to a range of creative activities that contribute to society, including pedagogy, research, activism, and the arts. Focusing on the connections between creativity and social change in the Americas, this collection encourages scholars to become cultural agents by reflecting on exemplary cases and thereby making them available as inspirations for more constructive theory and more innovative practice. Creativity supports democracy because artistic, administrative, and interpretive experiments need margins of freedom that defy monolithic or authoritarian regimes. The ingenious ways in which people pry open dead-ends of even apparently intractable structures suggest that cultural studies as we know it has too often gotten stuck in critique. Intellectual responsibility can get beyond denunciation by acknowledging and nurturing the resourcefulness of common and uncommon agents.
https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Agency-Americas-Carlos-Godenzzi/dp/0822334992/?tag=2022091-20
2006
(The Work of Art in the World is informed by many writers ...)
The Work of Art in the World is informed by many writers and theorists. Foremost among them is the eighteenth-century German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, who remains an eloquent defender of art-making and humanistic interpretation in the construction of political freedom. Schiller's thinking runs throughout Sommer's modern-day call for citizens to collaborate in the endless co-creation of a more just and more beautiful world.
https://www.amazon.com/Work-Art-World-Agency-Humanities/dp/0822355868/?tag=2022091-20
2013
Doris Sommer was born on January 15, 1947, in Germany. She is a daughter of Julius and Adela Sommer.
In 1968 Doris Sommers received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rutgers University, a Master of Arts degree in 1975, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1977. In 1970 she obtained a Master of Arts degree from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
From 1978 to 1980 Doris Sommer was an assistant professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at Livingston College. She began as an assistant and then became an associate professor of Spanish at Amherst College from 1980 to 1989, and served as a professor of Spanish and Women Studies from 1989 to 1991.
Since 1991 Sommer has been a professor of Graduate Studies in Latin American Literature at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Seminar of Latino Cultures since 1997. In 2000 she was appointed a director of Cultural Agency Initiative at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University.
Among her books are Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (1991), Proceed with Caution when Engaged by Minority Literature (1999), Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education (2004); and The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (2013).
(In a series of daring forays, from seventeenth-century In...)
1999(Responding to the pressures of current theoretical trends...)
1999(In Bilingual Aesthetics Sommer invites readers to make mi...)
2004(These essays bring home the most challenging observations...)
2003("Cultural agency" refers to a range of creative activitie...)
2006(Nationalisms and Sexualities addresses questions of how n...)
1991(National consolidation and romantic novels go hand in han...)
1991(The Work of Art in the World is informed by many writers ...)
2013Doria Sommer has two daughters: Anna Sommer Kaufman and Sara Sommer Kaufman.