Doris Sommer is the Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies. She is also the Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University, which was founded to promote social development through arts and humanities. Her research includes 19th-Century novels that helped to consolidate Latin American republics, the aesthetics of minority literature, including multilingual virtuosity, and she is now focused on art's constructive work in expanding rights and resources. 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); Bilingual Games: Some Literary Investigations, edited, 2004); Cultural Agency in the Americas edited (2006);The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency in Art and Interpretation (forthcoming). Professor Sommer has enjoyed and is dedicated to developing good public school education; she has a B.A. from New Jersey's Douglass College for Women and her Ph.D. from Rutgers University.