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Questioning Passion: James Elkins

October 22, 2015

4:30 PM

Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons

Tim Diette

Questioning Passion: James Elkins, E. C. Chadbourne Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

"Writing About Intense Encounters with Artworks: Some Thoughts on Immersion, Absorption, Passion, Emotion, Affect, Feeling, and the Sublime."

James Elkins is E.C. Chadbourne Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Author of over a dozen books, Elkins' writing focuses on the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature. Some of his books are exclusively on fine art (What Painting Is, Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?). Others include scientific and non-art images, writing systems, and archaeology (The Domain of Images, On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them), and some are about natural history (How to Use Your Eyes). His most recent books are What Photography Is, written against Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, and Art Critiques: A Guide. Elkins' work raises the serious question about the place that passion and passionate response might have in a university classroom, in general, and in a university discussion of artwork, in particular.

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