James Elkins

James Elkins

After 19 years of work, my experimental novel called Five Strange Languages is being published by Unnamed Press. It’s a very large, complex project in five volumes. The first one, Weak in Comparison to Dreams, is out, and there’s also a vinyl record to go with it. The second, A Short Introduction to Anneliese, is coming out this summer.

I’m posting weekly contests on social media. Anyone who can guess the hidden allusions gets a free copy. Test your literary knowledge! Here is a list of contests that are currently open. If you can identify one, email me for your copy.

Five Strange Languages is a single mega-novel. Lots more information here (scroll down).

I have uploaded 75 short videos on art theory to Youtube. These are for art students. They cover media, politics, gender, the sublime, skill, formal analysis, craft, time, narrative, Eurocentrism, style, research, the body… lots of subjects.

[Updated January 2025. Pages with information about the novel update live.]

Recent uploads: the books Pictures and Tears, Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?, How to Use Your Eyes, and an essay on the complicity between torture and formal analysis. Another entire book free, on Academia: What is Interesting Writing in Art History? It’s on ways to write experimental art history.

Visual Worlds

Co-authored with Erna Fiorentini Buy on Amazon. Visual Worlds is a large textbook on the visual world. It’s co-authored with the historian of art and science Erna Fiorentini, and it was published (after nearly six long years of work!) by Oxford University Press in 2020. It’s a full-on North American style textbook, with marginal cross-references, glossary, and online […]

The novel

These days I am concentrating on a work in progress—an experimental novel called Five Strange Languages. It’s long and complex: it has photographs, footnotes, multiple columns, graphs, charts, equations, and sheet music.  I have been working on it more or less every day since 2008. It’s divided into five volumes. Book 3, Weak in Comparison […]