James Elkins is E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Head of History of Art at the University College Cork, Ireland. He is the author of Pictures and Tears,How to Use Your Eyes, and WhatPainting Is and, most recently, of Visual Studies: ASkeptical Introduction and The Strange Place of Religionin Contemporary Art, all published by Routledge.