Concurrent Sessions' Overview
By clicking on the title of a session, you get to the abstracts of it,
Thursday, July 11, Afternoon 14:30-16:00: Concurrent Sessions I
I A: Systematic and historical views on migration (Dekanatssitzungssaal = DSS – KRP 1, Room No. 104)
1) Jean-Marc Bourdin: All of us are migrants
2) Miguel Rolland: Migration and Identity Appropriation in Ancient Mesoamerica
3) Camila Esguerra / Roberto Solarte: Sharks, Angels or others like us
I B: Mimetic Theory, Politics, and the Apocalypse (Seminarraum I = SR I – KRP 1, Room No. 048)
1) Carmen Dell`Aversano: Two notes on terminology and one on point of view: new Girardian perspectives on othering
2) Brian W. Nail: Unanimity, Precarity, and Mutuality: The Biopolitics of Sacrifice and the Future of Girardian Discourse
3) Stephen Gardner: The End of the Post-War Era and the Apocalypse of Man
I C: Constructions of the Other in Jihadism, the Need for Common Norms and a Biblical Perspective (Seminarraum III = SR III – KRP 1, Room No. 217)
1) Joel Hodge: Militant Jihadism: Indiscriminate violence on behalf of the victim
2) Wilhelm Guggenberger: Interpersonal encounter and common norms in times of migration
3) Bong Deock Lee: Diachrony in the Bible (via Skype)
I D: Migration in Film (Hörsaal I = HS 1 – KRP 3, Room No. E09)
1) Marina Ludwigs: ‘Beings’ telling refusal of themselves as a whole’: A Phenomenology of Encounter in Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us. (45 min)
2) Matthew Packer: Migration and Mimesis in Contemporary Fiction and Film: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, and Ai Weiwei’s Human Flow. (45 min)
I E: Theology, Migration & Politics (Madonnensaal = MS – KRP 3, Room No. 201)
Chair: Thérèse Onderdenwijngaard
1) Michael Kirwan: The Nightingale and the Paraclete: to honour Friedrich Spee
2) Matthew Tan: The Trauma of Migrants and the Event of Christ
3) Felicity McCallum: Mimetic theory, colonial culpability and the ascent to communion. The charred place of response to ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ for dispossessed peoples.
I F: Politics & Social Construction (Seminarraum VI = SR VI – KRP 3, Room No. 102)
1) Gustavo Vasconcelos: Modern criminal penalty: between sacrifice and forgiveness
2) Susan Wright: Can anything good come of populism?
3) Ivan Blecic / Fabio Bacchini / Emanuel Muroni: On Mimetic Hypothesis and the Production of Space
I G: Girard in Dialogue with Levinas (Seminarraum VII = SR VII – KRP 3, Room No. 103)
1) Tania Checchi: Time, the City and the Other: Girard and Levinas on Babel
2) David García-Ramos Gallego: Levinasian reading and Girardian subjects in the case of Nationalism in Spain: Strangers, aliens, foreigners, and other victims and prosecutors.
3) Joachim Duyndam / Renée van Riessen: Forgiveness and Mimetic Theory
Friday, July 12, Morning 11:00-12:30: Concurrent Session II
II A: Spotlights on Problems of Migration (Dekanatssitzungssaal = DSS – KRP 1, Room No. 104)
1) Johan Van der Walt: When Time Breaks: The Hiatus of Refugee Status
2) Tomás Guevara Aladino: Forced displacement, stereotypes and responsibility
3) Angela Rinaldi: Educational Processes favouring the Human Development of Unaccompanied Minor Migrants: René Girard Mimetic Theory as a key to interpretation
II B: Mimesis in Art and Literature (Seminarraum I = SR I – KRP 1, Room No. 048)
1) Petra Steinmair-Pösel / Thomas Stuke: Looking Through the Ghostly Veil of the Other
2) Martha J. Reineke: An Ambivalence of the Heart: Rougemont, D’Arcy, and Girard
3) Joakim Wrethed: “In an Artist’s Studio” by Christina Rossetti as Seeing Without Seeing: Girard, Heidegger, Scotus and Marion
II C: Mimetic Theory and Social Contexts (Seminarraum III = SR III – KRP 1, Room No. 217)
1) Marc Réveillon: The right to poverty
2) Claudio Lanza: Archaeology Violence and Conflict: A Conceptual Case for Mimetic Rivalry
3) Sandor Goodhart: Two Exiles: Sigmund Freud and René Girard
II D: Mimetic Mechanisms in the Media (Hörsaal I = HS 1 – KRP 3, Room No. E09)
1) Kirstin Breitenfellner: How can we talk about victims in the media?
2) António Machuco Rosa: Mimetic desire, exclusion, polarization in social digital networks
3) Kathleen M. Vandenberg: Mimetic Consumption of the “Wild:” Travel and the Contagious Representation of Nature as Other
II E: Theological Anthropology (Madonnensaal = MS – KRP 3, Room No. 201)
1) Marcia Pally: Mimetic Violence: As old as Cain but not as old as Adam?
2) Dominic Pigneri: Refugees from Eden: Original Sin in Schwager’s Banished from Eden
3) Rebecca Pawloski: Christ´s Celibacy as Non-Violent Path
II F: American Democracy in History and Literature (Seminarraum VI = SR VI – KRP 3, Room No. 102)
1) Bryan L. Kampbell: Containing the Contagion of Democracy: The Federalist and the Liberal Tradition
2) Stephen McKenna: Lincoln's Sacrificial Imagination: Constructions of The Other in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates
3) Andrew McKenna: Mimetic History in Fiction, Fact, and Prophecy: Twain, Douglass, Lincoln
II G: Victimization in global hot spots (Seminarraum VII = SR VII – KRP 3, Room No. 103)
1) Yaghoob Foroutan: Demographic Derivers of Religious Intolerance and Violence: Australia, Iran and New Zealand in Global Contexts
2) Johann Rossouw: South Africa’s colonial wound: Girard and the struggle for reconciliation in South Africa
3) Aleksei Zygmont: The World of Judo Masons and Sodomites: Enemy Images in the Contemporary Russian Orthodoxy
Friday, July 12, Afternoon 14:30-16:00: Concurrent Session III
III A: Philosophy and Mimetic Theory (Dekanatssitzungssaal = DSS – KRP 1, Room No. 104)
1) Jeremiah Alberg: Transcendent Principles and the Violent Sacred
2) Anthony D. Traylor: Heidegger on Nature
3) Sherwood Belangia: Mimetic Desire and the Piety of Socrates
III B: Feminist Thinking, Migration, Theology and Mimetic Theory (Seminarraum I = SR I – KRP 1, Room No. 048)
1) Chelsea King: Perspective of An-Other: Girard through a Feminist lens
2) Annette Edenhofer: Who is coming? Who comes to meet? Migrants, Refugees, host(ile) countries: The Perspectives of Martha Nussbaum and René Girard
3) Wiel Eggen: Monadic prelates without the divine rival
III C: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives on Migration (Seminarraum III = SR III – KRP 1, Room No. 217)
1) Markus Wierschem: Conceptualizing Violentropy: Steps to a Transdisciplinary Concept of Dis | Order
2) Timon Odeny: Theo-Political Challenges Concerning the Relations of Somali migration in Kenya
3) Emil Hobi: Impulse aus der mimetischen Theorie für die praktische Seelsorge in Zeiten der Migration (Präsentation given in German)
III D: Scapegoating in Film (Hörsaal I = HS 1 – KRP 3, Room No. E09)
1) Alessandro Grilli: Demonizing the Other: witch hunt, cultural theory, and the Girardian scapegoat (45 min)
III E: Mimetic Theory in Psychology and Education (Madonnensaal = MS – KRP 3, Room No. 201)
1) D. Vincent Riordan: Madness and the Archetypal Scapegoat
2) Helene Cristini: How can education educate the educators following René Girard’s apocalyptical thinking’
3) Curtis Gruenler / Dennis Feaster (via Skype): Modelling Conversion: Positive and Negative Mimesis in Communities of Care for Children with Intellectual Disabilities
III F: Scapegoats, Monsters & Literature (Seminarraum VI = SR VI – KRP 3, Room No. 102)
1) Timothy Long: The Scapegoat in Art / The Scapegoat as Art
2) Maura Junius: Man or Monster: The Imagined Other in Five Theatrical Productions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
3) William Johnsen: Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean & Mimetic History
III G: Mimetic Theory and the Bible (Seminarraum VII = SR VII – KRP 3, Room No. 103)
1) Berry Vorstenbosch: Mimetic Nothingness: A Girardian Reading of St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians
2) Thomas Sojer: Triumph and/or Scandal. Theologia Crucis in René Girard and Simone Weil
3) Unai Buil Zamorano: "This last lie would be even worse than the first one" (Mt 27:64): a mimetic reading of the conclusion of the Gospel according to St. Matthew
For Information on the conference, the call for papers, accommodation, travel, plenary speakers, and our optional cultural program click here to jump to the top of the start page and then use the menu to the right.
Graciously co-sponsored by: 
Picture 1: "Migrants and refugees queue at a camp near Gevgelija" by Nikolay Doychinov, © AFP
Picture 2: Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference