#  ROMANCE LANGUAGES 205 - Pedagogies of Liberation: Race, Gender, and Class(rooms) 

 





 Semester:   Fall 

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 Year offered:  2026 

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 Link: [Course Website](https://locator.tlt.harvard.edu/course/colgsas-226306/2026/fall/14483) 

 

 

 

"Pedagogies of Liberation" is preparation and accompaniment for new teachers who teach (anything!). We read selected works by exemplary pedagogues: Friedrich Schiller, María Montessori, John Dewey, W.B. Du Bois, R. Tagore, Paulo Freire, Augusto Boal, José Vasconcelos, Gabriela Mistral, Albert Cullum among others. These pedagogical pioneers display a remarkable coherence in theory and in practices that somehow remain “alternative” to less effective but normalized approaches. They share a mission to democratize societies through cultivating particularly human skills and the resulting self-esteem in societies marked by legacies of extraction and exclusion. Today, perhaps more urgently than ever -- given the crisis in mental health, the decline in reading practices, and the availability of AI to shortcut learning processes -- teachers can facilitate student flourishing through Pedagogies of Liberation.



 

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  [### Doris Sommer

 ](/people/doris-sommer) <dsommer@fas.harvard.edu>Ira Jewell Williams, Jr., Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish) and in African and African American Studies

Director of Graduate Studies

 

 

 Doris Sommer is the Ira and Jewell Williams Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies, also in Social Studies. She is founder of "Cultural Agents," an Initiative at Harvard and an NGO dedicated to reviving... 

 

 

      ![Doris](/sites/g/files/omnuum8296/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-04/sommer_1-3.jpg?itok=IGaBXPtI) 

 

 

 

   [### Adriana Gutiérrez

 ](/people/adriana-gutierrez) <agutierr@fas.harvard.edu>Senior Preceptor in Romance Languages and Literatures (Spanish)

 

 

 Research Interests: Development of Multi-Media Cultural Materials for the Teaching of Spanish; Twentieth-Century Spanish and Latin American Literature; Curriculum Development for Spanish Language and Literature; Teaching Methodology in Second Language... 

 

 

      ![Adriana](/sites/g/files/omnuum8296/files/styles/hwp_4_5__690x865/public/2025-04/gutierrez-2.jpg?itok=ujwFgq-s) 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ Fall 2026 ](/term/fall-2026)
- [ 200 ](/class-categories/200)
- [ Doris Sommer ](/instructor/doris-sommer)
- [ Romance Studies ](/language/romance-studies)
- [ Adriana Gutiérrez ](/language-instructor/adriana-gutierrez)