Note: information on reaching me, on unpublished texts, etc., follows this bio.
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James Elkins grew up in Ithaca, New York, separated from Cornell University by a quarter-mile of woods once owned by the naturalist Laurence Palmer.
He stayed on in Ithaca long enough to get the BA degree (in English and Art History), with summer hitchhiking trips to Alaska, Mexico, Guatemala, the Caribbean, and Columbia. For the last twenty-five years he has lived in Chicago; he got a graduate degree in painting, and then switched to Art History, got another graduate degree, and went on to do the PhD in Art History, which he finished in 1989. (All from the University of Chicago.) Since then he has been teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism.
His 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).
Current projects include a series called the Stone Summer Theory Institutes, a book called The Project of Painting: 1900-2000, a series called Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism in the Visual Art, and a book written against Camera Lucida.
He married Margaret MacNamidhe in 1994 on Inishmore, one of the Aran Islands, off the West coast of Ireland. Margaret is also an art historian, with a specialty in Delacroix. Jim's interests include microscopy (with a Zeiss Nomarski differential interference microscope and Anoptral phase contrast), optics (he owns an ophthalmologist's slit-lamp microscope), stereo photography (with a Realist camera), playing piano, and (whenever possible) winter ocean diving.
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Contact information:
Hi, most everything about me, including unpublished texts, is here:
www.jameselkins.com
That site also has a contact form:
http://www.jameselkins.com/#page6
And that website also has my travel calendar, in case you live outside the US:
http://www.jameselkins.com/#page4
(Amazon won't let people link their Google calendars to their profile page: don't know why.)
I'm also very active on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/jamesprestonelkins
And I am active on Library Thing (posting reviews of contemporary fiction):
http://www.librarything.com/home/JimElkins
PS, I also have an Amazon "aStore," a special site for buying books:
http://astore.amazon.com/jameselkins
And last, I also have an Amazon Listmania! list:
http://www.amazon.com/lm/2ULLGW8L1NVW7
