Initiatives

Romance Sphere
Romance Sphere is the online magazine of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard. It features reviews, essays, videos, and other materials pertaining to the culture, history, and society of countries, regions, or communities where a Neo-Latin language is spoken.

Slow food. High culture.
Good manners. Public engagement.
Décroissance sereine. Estética antropofágica. Dolce vita.
The Romance way: particularly global.

Cultural Agents
Cultural Agents is an interface between academic learning and civic engagement. The Initiative promotes arts and humanities as social resources. In courses, conferences, and community-based projects, we join a range of creative collaborators to feature art and interpretation as fundamental to active citizenship. In everything from education, medicine, science and law to political leadership and business, art is a force that drives innovation. With a long humanistic tradition dedicated to civic development, and thanks to contemporary mentors who show how the challenges of scarcity, violence, and disease respond to creativity, Cultural Agents links resourcefulness with service.
metaLAB
metaLAB is a research and teaching unit at Harvard University dedicated to exploring and expanding the frontiers of networked culture in the arts and humanities. It was founded on the belief that many of the key research challenges and opportunities of our era — fundamental questions regarding experience in a connected world, democracy and social justice, the boundaries between nature and culture— transcend divisions between the arts, humanities and sciences; between the academy, industry, and the public sphere; between theoretical and applied knowledge.

 

Spanish Heritage Language image

 

 

Initiative on Teaching Spanish as a Heritage Language

 

The Romance Languages and Literatures Initiative on Teaching Spanish as a Heritage Language aims to create a community of teachers and researchers around the field of teaching Spanish as a heritage language in order to:

 

  1. Develop pedagogical resources to strengthen and broader Latino students linguistic, cultural and professional knowledge of Spanish
  2. Develop a research agenda to contribute to the theoretical and pedagogical efforts in the field
  3. Form a learning community of teachers and researchers of Spanish as heritage language that collaborates to advance the field with publications of original work and handbooks, share resources and find best practices for our heritage students.

 

Charlie Archive at Harvard
From http://pioneers.darthcrimson.org

The main goal of the Charlie Archive at the Harvard Library project is to preserve manuscript, printed, digital, and ephemeral materials produced in the aftermath of these events. These materials will be archived by Harvard Library, and made available for research and education to scholars, teachers, and students. For scholars, the archive will be used as a resource for research in various fields and disciplines. For teachers and students, the archive will serve as a database and resource for the development of teaching materials. For all future users of the library, it will document a peculiar moment in the early twenty-first century, when the word “Charlie” all of a sudden took on tragic significance, and became charged with conflicting emotions, opinions, and agendas.