ABSTRACT
We do not necessarily talk about a “Chicago school” of visual studies, but I believe that doing so helps us situate and better understand the contribution of W.J.T. Mitchell to studies of visual culture. What if we think of Mitchell as engaged in a sympathetic undertaking along with Joel Snyder and, at a slightly later date, James Elkins? I write relying heavily on the evidence of the texts and with no special biographical insight into art history and visual studies in the 1980s and 1990s at the University of Chicago or in Chicago in general. While I may overlook certain things, perhaps my distance will allow me to overcome other intentional fallacies that might be contradicted by texts themselves.
