Doris Sommer’s new book, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities, revives the collaboration between aesthetic philosophy and democratic development. From the top and from below, creative projects and their interpretation fuel positive change and renew humanists’ opportunities to make civic contributions.

Sommer is Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance languages and Literatures and African and African American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative.