W. J. T. Mitchell

The Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. From 1988-1991 he was the head of the Department of English there, and since 1978, he has edited the prestigious periodical Critical Inquiry. His academic work focuses mainly on the relations of image and language researched in the area of art and literature, and in the media. Topics of his publications include a wide range of phenomena: from general problems of the theory of representation to detailed issues of cultural politics and political culture. He received many prestigious awards and scholarships (including those of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society). Numerous translations of his works include the following languages: French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Chinese, and Japanese. His published books include: Blake's Composite Art (Princeton, 1977), Iconology (Chicago, 1986), Picture Theory (Chicago, 1994), The Last Dinosaur Book (Chicago, 1998), What Do Pictures Want? (Chicago, 2005), and Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (Chicago, 2011). He edited six volumes of essays published by the University of Chicago Press: The Language of Images (1980), On Narrative (1981), The Politics of Interpretation (1983), Against Theory (1985), Art and the Public Sphere (1993), and Landscape and Power (1994). Professor Mitchell will have a lecture on 25th October in MOCAK. Hosted by Lukasz Zaremba, translator of What Do Pictures Want?