James Elkins
News:
If you're in Chicago and interested in experimental literary fiction, join the new writer's group. Latest book: What Heaven Looks Like. Passed the 300,000 word mark on my work in progress. Writing every day! Please use the contact form to schedule lectures, studio visits, or seminars. I'm using Academia.edu as a message board. See Lectures page for my travel schedule.
I have decided not to find a publisher for The Impending Single History of Art. (Too many years spent pursuing academic publishers.) It's the last of my art history books, and the one with the most information about global art history. I'm going to be posting it in its entirety on this site and on Academia. The chapters are on Google Drive, so they're live and always up to date. Please send comments & criticism here.
Latest uploads:
The book Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?; the book How to Use Your Eyes; and an essay on the complicity between torture and formal analysis. (There is also a website with reviews of contemporary piano music.)
Live Writing Projects:
I am experimenting with writing live on the internet. These texts update live, and you can contribute to them & be thanked when the book is published. (1) What is Interesting Writing in Art History?, (2) Writing with Images. Other live writing projects are finished: Visual Worlds, and The Impending Single History of Art. Thanks everyone for contributing!
Academic Books
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A series of seven books, intended as barometers of the current state of art theory on seven different subjects. This site includes the Series Preface and Series Afterword.
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Three anthologies are planned, in Russian, Spanish, and German. Links will be added here as the books appear.
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A book on the relation between art history and aesthetics, with a sample chapter on the reasons art historians don't attend aesthetics conferences.
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A book on the principal theories of modernism and postmodernism, considered in terms of how they divide up the past two centuries.
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A book about the kinds of images that are made and studied throughout the university, not just in the arts and humanities.
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A series of five books on art theory, produced at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
A comprehensive look at the spread of art history, theory, and criticism around the world.
A comprehensive look at the history of theories about the nature of pictures and images.