Darby English is the Carl Darling Buck Professor at the University of Chicago, where he teaches courses in modern and contemporary art and cultural studies. He also serves as Adjunct Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. English’s research probes art’s interaction with instituted forms of historical subjectivity and experience, focusing on artistic and other cultural manifestations of discomposure and optimism. More theoretical formulations of English’s work examine the difficulty of studying these themes as historical objects while also negotiating their implications as sources of anxiety about historical change. English is the author of 1971: A Year in the Life of Color (2016) and How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness (MIT Press, 2007). To Describe a Life: Essays at the Intersection of Art and Race Terror is forthcoming from Yale University Press in autumn 2018.
Image credit: Courtesy of the artist.
