Photo by Domenico Aronica

(中文簡介)

W. J. T. Mitchell is Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of Literature, Art History, and Cinema at the University of Chicago and editor of Critical Inquiry, a leading journal devoted to critical theory in the arts and human sciences. Recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Mitchell is one of the most prominent literary critics in the United States. 

 

Dr. Mitchell is recognized internationally as one of the leading theorists of iconology (the study of images across media) and on relations between visual and verbal representations. His many books and articles focus on the history and theories of media, visual art, and literature, from the eighteenth century to the present. His work has gained increasing relevance and attention in a global context where the interchange of images, and advances in image science itself, have intensified what he terms (in Picture Theory) “ekphrastic hope” and "ekphrastic fear.” 

Dr. Mitchell's numerous pioneering works in image theory, spanning four decades, address the central themes of our conference on "intercultural Adaptation, Globalization, and Risk." These books include Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986), Picture Theory (1994), What Do Pictures Want? Essays on the Lives and Loves of Images (2005), and Cloning Terror: The War of Images, 9/11 to the Present (2011). Through these and other studies, Dr. Mitchell has established himself as the preeminent commentator on the theory, practice, and risks of image production in a global world.