Join WJT Mitchell, Bart Schultz and John Preus for a conversation discussing the matter of images and animals and their relationship to the present day.

WJT Mitchell is Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago. He is editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Critical Inquiry, a quarterly devoted to critical theory in the arts and human sciences. A scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature, Mitchell is associated with the emergent fields of visual culture and iconology (the study of images across the media). He is known especially for his work on the relations of visual and verbal representations in the context of social and political issues. Under his editorship, Critical Inquiry has published special issues on public art, psychoanalysis, pluralism, feminism, the sociology of literature, canons, race and identity, narrative, the politics of interpretation, postcolonial theory, and many other topics. He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Morey Prize in art history given by the College Art Association of America. In 2003, he received the University of Chicago’s prestigious Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

Bart Schultz is Senior Lecturer in Humanities (Philosophy) and Director of the Humanities Division’s Civic Knowledge Project at the University of Chicago. He has been teaching in the College at UChicago since 1987, and his books include Essays on Henry Sidgwick (Cambridge, 1992), Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe (Cambridge, 2004), and Utilitarianism and Empire (Lexington, 2005). Through the Civic Knowledge Project, he has developed a range of public ethics programs affording rich opportunities to get involved with the larger South Side community in educationally relevant ways. Visit http://civicknowledge.uchicago.edu/winningwords.shtml to learn more about the Civic Knowledge Project.

John Preus is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist. He holds an MFA from the University of Chicago (2005) and studied furniture-making in Minnesota with John Nesset. Preus founded Dilettante Studios in 2010, co-founded SHoP (2011), and Material Exchange (2005). Preus was the creative director of the Rebuild Foundation shop until 2012 and project lead for Theaster Gates’ 12 Ballads for Huguenot House, at Documenta 13. Preus is currently a Jackman Goldwasser resident at Hyde Park Art Center leading up to his solo exhibition, The Beast. His work has been exhibited at EXPO Chicago, The Heilbronn Kunstverein in Germany, The Experimental Sound Studio, The Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft, The Huguenot House in Kassel, Germany during Documenta 13, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Betty Rhymer Gallery, The Chicago Cultural Center, The Devos Art Museum, The St. Louis Art Guild, and The Smart Museum of Art.