Elaine Scarry is Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value for the Department of English at Harvard University. Her research encompasses many topics, including 20th-century Drama; the 19th-century British novel; theories of representation; language of physical pain; and the structure of verbal and material making in art, science, and the law. In her book The Body in Pain, known as a definitive study of pain and inflicting pain, Scarry argues that physical pain leads to destruction and the unmaking of the human world, whereas human creation at the opposite end of the spectrum leads to the making of the world. Professor Scarry’s other publications include On Beauty and Being Just; Resisting Representation; and Dreaming by the Book.