The Lost Promise of the Humanities: Art, Theater, and Participatory Democracy
Building on the extraordinary intervention made in scholarly and civic life by Doris Sommer’s The Work of Art in the World, this talk explores her efforts to create a public humanities, taking seriously the ways in which civic participation depends on the aesthetic judgments and imagination that art inspires.
With examples ranging from the artistic intervention by Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus to reduce violence, to the creative use of books and literature in Lima, to her Cultural Agents project at Harvard, Sommers challenges us to rethink the promise of the humanities as an engagement with the world.
Sommer’s recent work makes a major contribution to what we at the Center for Black Studies Research have been calling “engaged scholarship”: a form of practicing the humanities that brings together social actors, activists, artists, and our communities as researchers, teachers, and students.
This lecture is kindly cosponsored by the Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
Contact
Contact Mahsheed Ayoub at 805-893-3914 or
Professor Esther Lezra