Dean Diana Sorensen
James F. Rothenberg Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Professor of Comparative Literature
Academic Year 2009-2010

Ethnic Studies and Human Rights

With the collaboration of colleagues across disciplines and schools, the Arts and Humanities division launched a number of efforts in Ethnic Studies and Human Rights.

While students can find the study of human rights in the General Education curriculum as part of Ethical Reasoning (Human Rights: A Philosophical Introduction) and Societies of the World (Health, Culture, and Community: Case Studies in Global Health and Inequality in Society in 21st Century East Asia), November 2009 saw the creation of a new secondary field in Ethnic Studies. The secondary field offers students an opportunity to pursue sustained, interdisciplinary study of issues related to ethnicity, migration, indigeneity, and human rights with particular emphasis three ethnic groups and their overseas counterparts—Asian American/Transpacific, Native American/Indigenous, and US Latino/American hemispheric.  Ethnic studies thus focuses on American ethnic groups in a transnational context. Courses address critiques of race in the social sciences and in the humanities, and consider the role of mobility, diasporas, migration and indigeneity in the configuration of group identities. Scholars and students seek to understand why the boundaries of particular ethnic groups change and why this process of ethnic group formation is so fluid.

The secondary field in Ethnic Studies allows students to explore these questions from a variety of different angles and disciplinary perspectives.  Students who choose to pursue the secondary field in Ethnic Studies will choose from a wide range of courses under the guidance of a faculty adviser from the Committee on Ethnic Studies. Given the relevance of Ethnic Studies to both local and global issues, the secondary field encourages, and provides through a number of its courses, opportunities for interacting directly with local communities and working outside of the traditional classroom. These courses provide a useful bridge between theory and practice, connecting students’ academic studies with local and global issues.

A conference, “Public Arts, Public Acts: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Ethnic Studies,” was held in April 2010, and featured panels which included both faculty and students.

Efforts are now underway to enhance internship and study abroad opportunities related to the study of human rights. The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) has launched a number of internship opportunities for Harvard College students interested in Human Rights.  Students with proficiency in Spanish can elect to spend a semester in Santiago, Chile or Buenos Aires, Argentina to study at university and to immerse themselves in human rights issues with a Latin American perspective. Students choose from courses at local universities, and may elect to do an internship at one of a number of select non-profit organizations working on human rights issues. Summer internship grants are also available to qualified Harvard College students seeking to work for 8-10 weeks in a human rights organization in the U.S. or abroad.

Dramatics

Dramatic Arts at Harvard includes the study and practice of theatre, dance, opera, and other multimedia or multisensory performance forms. Like other Secondary Fields at Harvard, Dramatic Arts provides the opportunity to pursue focused study outside of the formal constraints of the concentration.  Unlike many others, however, Dramatic Arts is built on the premise that historical, literary, theoretical, and practical studies are best when conceived of as mutually interdependent. In AY2009-10, Dramatics extended its reach beyond the English Department through a strengthening of its connections with the A.R.T., and an expansion of its campus presence. “Theater, Dream, and Shakespeare,” a course co-taught by Marjorie Garber (English, V.E.S.) and Diane Paulus (American Repertory Theater), was offered by the Program in General Education in the fall of 2009.  This course explored the plays of William Shakespeare and the A.R.T.’s Shakespeare Exploded, as well as dramatic theory and the study of dreams. Students watched performances of the A.R.T. production, wrote reviews, and interacted with actors.

The Harvard Arts Initiative

With the support of President Faust and Dean of the Arts and Humanities, Diana Sorensen, a new initiative to showcase the arts at Harvard was launched in AY2009-10. The initiative includes Freshmen Seminars, as well as General Education and departmental courses either focused solely on art-making or incorporating a significant art-making component into their course of study. This initiative is one of the many activities created in response to the recommendations of the Harvard Task Force on the Arts, which affirmed the importance of art-making in allowing innovation and imagination to thrive on campus, and in educating and empowering creative minds across all disciplines.

Foreign Languages

In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, instruction in more than 70 ancient and modern languages is offered, far more than at any other American university. In AY2009-10, new “bridge” courses were launched. These courses integrate language instruction (such as Arabic and Chinese) into literature and other disciplinary instruction. Bridge courses have now been created or are under development in a wide variety of modern languages taught in the FAS. These integrated courses are one element in a strategy to enhance the transcultural training of students, which, in turn, prepares them for global citizenship.

Digital Humanities

The term “digital humanities” refers to the use of information technology in research and teaching about human society and culture. The Digital Humanities Initiative has been established to provide faculty with core technology resources and to convene conversations advancing awareness of innovations in information technology in humanities research and teaching. Under the direction of Alexander Parker, Director of Research Computing in the Humanities, the initiative has created an online guide to core technology resources, standards, and tools.  The Digital Humanities Initiative also sponsored a number of campus events, including:

• The 2nd Digital Humanities Fair with 10 Harvard IT groups and over forty faculty attendees;
• The first publication of the Digital Humanities Resource Guide, and distribution to all Harvard humanities faculty;
• Submission of six digital humanities grant requests to Federal entities and foundations;
• The first Harvard Digital Shorts film series;
• The first "By faculty for faculty" tool talk series.

College Fellows at the Humanities Center

In AY2009-10, the Humanities Center became a sponsor of the College Fellows Program, a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship with a teaching focus. Fellowships are awarded to support projects that share the Center’s commitment to interdisciplinarity and internationalism. The Center welcomes applications from all fields within the humanities and the allied social sciences. Despite the great diversity among humanities disciplines, they are joined in their commitment to the spirit of informed and independent interpretation, something key to making judgments about the relationship between facts and values.

Silk Road Project

In April 2010, it was announced that the Silk Road Project would move its headquarters to Harvard University, strengthening the partnership between the University and this world-renowned organization promoting innovation and learning through the arts. The new location at 175 North Harvard Street in Allston will serve as a working laboratory exploring intersections between the arts and academic study. The Silk Road Project is a nonprofit artistic, cultural, and education organization with a vision of connecting the world’s neighborhoods by bringing together artists and audiences. The new partnership builds on the success of a relationship between the Silk Road Project and Harvard, begun in 2005, which has already inspired multidisciplinary college courses as well as numerous workshops and performances involving members of the Silk Road Ensemble and Harvard undergraduate musicians. The new Silk Road Project headquarters’ location in space shared with the Harvard Allston Educational Portal, provides opportunities for further cultural collaborations that will benefit the Harvard community and its neighbors.

Student Outreach

The Arts & Humanities Division has partnered with the Office of Admissions, House Masters and alumni/ae to host a series of events that explore the benefits of a Humanities concentration, both professionally and personally.  In AY2009-2010, alumni came back to their Houses to talk to students about their lives since graduation. Alumni profiles are also now featured on the Division’s website.

New Director of the Villa I Tatti

In December 2009, Provost Steve Hyman announced that Lino Pertile would become director of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti in Florence, Italy, beginning in the summer of 2010. Pertile succeeds Joseph Connors, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, who ran the center from 2002 to 2010.  After a sabbatical year, Connors will resume teaching Italian art at Harvard College.

Pertile, the Carl A. Pescosolido Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is a renowned scholar of Italian literature, with a particular focus on the medieval and Renaissance periods. He has taught numerous courses at Harvard College, including the popular “Dante’s Divine Comedy and Its World,” which was first taught in 1998.  Pertile’s commitment to undergraduate teaching and advising earned him the award of Harvard College Professor in 2005. Since 2000, Pertile has served as master of Eliot House along with his wife, Anna Bensted.

Curricular Planning

In AY2009-10, the Division, with Professor Homi Bhabha, launched the Foundational Course Initiative, which will develop three courses on the topics of visual arts, text, and performance.  Professor Bhabha is also spearheading the creation of an interdepartmental theory course for the Division of Arts and Humanities.

The Division has created and implemented a new course template to track course offerings in the Arts & Humanities and to optimize curricular interactions and efficiencies.