James Elkins,
Yeager Recital Hall
7:00 p.m.
Art History at Elon Speaker Series
Dr. James Elkins will hold a speech titled “Why Photography Isn’t Friendly: Excerpts from a Work in Progress, Written Against Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida.” Elkins is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he teaches in the departments of Art History, Theory and Criticism and Visual and Critical Studies. He is currently working to develop an entirely new program called Image History as a cooperative venture between the School of the Art Institute, the Burren College of Art in Ireland, Peking University (China), and the Chicago Theory Group. Dr. Elkins has written 17 books for both academic and general audiences, including The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing (1996), Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis (1999), and, forthcoming this year, The Narrow Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. Elkins has spoken on his research internationally and will bring to Elon his most current musings.