Ian Balfour is Professor of English at York University. He is the author of several books including The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy and is editor of collections on Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, human rights, and the “foreignness of film.” He has taught recently at Cornell as the M. H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor of English. In fall 2013 he was the Kress Foundation Fellow in the Literature of Art at the Clarke Art Institute and in winter 2014 the Autrey Visiting Professor at Rice University. For 2014-15 he will be a member of the Rice Seminar devoted to 18th and 19th century British culture. He’s finishing an interminable book on the sublime.