Professor of literary studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands.

professor of literary studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Until 2005 he was the Queen Beatrix Professor of Dutch studies, as well as professor of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. His main research interests are visual and cultural studies, literary theory, comparative literature, Holocaust studies, and gender studies. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary art and literature. He is the author of numerous books in both Dutch and English, among which are Francis Bacon and The Loss of Self (Cambridge, MA, 1992), Caught By History: Holocaust Effects in Art, Literature, and Theory (Stanford, 1997), Armando: Shaping Memory (Rotterdam, 2000) and Art in Mind: How Contemporary Images Shape Thought (Chicago, 2005).