Instituto Cervantes and Harvard University renew Memorandum of Understanding to continue with the Observatorio of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures in the U.S.

• Juan Manuel Bonet, Director of the Instituto Cervantes, will sign the new agreement on Monday, April 16th

• The Observatorio has become a benchmark institution for the study of the Spanish language in the United States

Cambridge, April 11th, 2018. The Observatorio of the Instituto Cervantes at Harvard University will continue to carry out its work to study the Spanish language in the U.S. through a renewed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which will be signed on Monday, April 16th by Juan Manuel Bonet, Director of the Instituto Cervantes global network, and Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard University, and acknowledged by Diana Sorensen, Director of the Observatorio of the Instituto Cervantes at Harvard and James F. Rothenberg Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature at Harvard. This agreement renews the successful collaboration between both institutions for the next five years allowing the Observatorio to continue its research and analysis on the state of the Spanish language in the United States, its characteristics and its teaching, as well as on Spanish, Hispanic American, and U.S. Hispanic cultures, with an emphasis on their literatures.

The new agreement extends the MoU signed in 2013 by the President of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust, and the then Director of the Instituto Cervantes global network, Víctor García de la Concha, through which the Observatorio of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures in the United States was created. Since then, headed by Francisco Moreno-Fernández, the Observatorio has become a benchmark

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institution for the study of the Spanish language in the U.S. The Observatorio has published 39 reports which detail the results of the Center’s research on the Hispanic reality in the U.S. from various perspectives including: the presence of the Spanish language in the education system, the characteristics of U.S. Spanish, and the social, economic, and political features of the Hispanic population in the country.

In addition, in the last five years the Observatorio has carried out an extensive programme of events, with more than 120 activities, with the aim of analyzing and promoting the Spanish language and its cultures. The series “Conversations in the Observatorio,” which has hosted experts in linguistics, literature, architecture, music, and philosophy, has become a debate forum that contributes to disseminate the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures throughout Harvard and beyond. Furthermore, the center has consolidated its training activities for Spanish language teachers, paying special attention to the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language.

Over the coming years, the Observatorio will continue its close collaboration with Harvard University centers and departments, such as the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Graduate School of Education, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration and Rights, through which the Observatorio supports Hispanic students at Harvard.

More information

Observatorio de la lengua española y las culturas hispánicas en los Estados Unidos / Observatory of the Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures in the United States [email protected] http://cervantesobservatorio.fas.harvard.edu @ObserESHarvard

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