René GIRARD

Stanford University, USA
Honorary Chair of COV&R
COV&R-page on René Girard:
http://info.uibk.ac.at/c/c2/theol/cover/girard.html

Curriculum vitae

René Girard was born in the southern French city of Avignon on Christmas day in 1923. Between 1943 and 1947, he studied in Paris at the École des Chartres, an institution for the training of archivists and historians, where he specialized in medieval history. In 1947 he went to Indiana University on a year's fellowship and eventually made almost his entire career in the United States. He completed a PhD in history at Indiana University in 1950. The dissertation topic was "American Opinion of France, 1940- 1943." He also began to teach literature, the field in which he would first make his reputation. He taught at Duke University and at Bryn Mawr before becoming a professor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. In 1971 he went to the State University of New York at Buffalo for five years, returned to Johns Hopkins, and then finished his academic career at Stanford University where he taught between 1981 and his retirement in 1995.
Girard continues to lecture and write and still offers a seminar at Stanford, where he and his wife Martha make their home. In 1990, friends and colleagues of Girard's established the Colloquium on Violence and Religion to further research and discussion about the themes of Girard's work. The Colloquium meets annually either in Europe or the United States.

Selected Publications

• I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Novalis, Toronto, 2001 (first published in 1999 as Je vois satan tomber comme l'éclair).

• Wenn all das beginnt…: Dialog mit Michel Treguer, Druck- und Verlagshaus Thaur GmbH; Lit Verlag, Thaur, Münster 1997 (first published in 1994 as Quand ces choses commenceront… Entretiens avec Michel Treguer).

• A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare, Oxford, New York, 1991 (out of print). Republished by Gracewing Publishing, Gracewing House, 2 Southern Ave., Leominster, Herefordshire, HR6 0QF.

• Job: The Victim of his People, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1987 (first published in 1985 as La route antique des hommes pervers).

• Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1987 (first published in 1978 as Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde).

• The Scapegoat, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1986 (first published in 1982 as Le bouc émissaire).

• To Double Business Bound: Essays on Literature, Mimesis and Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1978.

• Violence and the Sacred, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1977 (first published in 1972 as La violence et le sacré).

• Feodor Dostoevsky: The Resurrection from the Underground, edited and translated by James G. Williams, Crossroad, New York, 1997 (first published in 1963).

• Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1965 (first published in 1961 as Mensonge romantique et verité romanesque ).