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One of the most influential 20th century Catholic thinkers, René Girard transformed our understanding of culture, religion, and human desire. Through an intensive reading of Girard’s works, in conjunction with the fiction of the greatest writers, this five-day seminar will explore imitation, conflict, and scapegoating, connecting them to central themes of Christian theology.
The seminar is co-sponsored by the Nova Forum for Catholic Thought.
Location and Format:
This seminar will be held at University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Students will meet twice daily during 2.5 hr sessions in seminar style lecture and discussion. Students will be expected to prepare the readings carefully, submit study questions in advance, and participate in each session.
Application Information
- This seminar is open to all undergraduate students (including 2025 graduates) interested in understanding the thought of one of the great modern Christian apologists.
- Applicants will be required to submit an online application form including:
- A list of completed coursework.
- At least one and as many as two letter(s) of recommendation from a professor at the school in which the student is currently enrolled.
- A statement of interest no longer than 750 words, which includes an explanation of how this seminar might bear on the student’s current intellectual interests.
- All application materials can be submitted through the online application interface. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen applicants will be admitted to this seminar.
- Application Deadline is February 2, 2025
Cynthia L. Haven is an American literary scholar, author, critic, Slavicist, and journalist.
While at the University of Michigan, she studied with Nobel poet Joseph Brodsky. Her books include Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard, which the San Francisco Chronicle named one of the best books of 2018. The biography was also named a 2019 CHOICE Magazine Outstanding Academic Title. Her Czesław Miłosz: A California Life was a finalist for a Northern California Book Award. She is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar.
Her Penguin Modern Classics anthology for the selected writings of René Girard was published in June 2023, and a short German anthology was published in 2022 with the Leipzig publisher Reclam, for its popular “Was bedeutet das alles?” series.
She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna and a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages while researching her book on French theorist René Girard. She was a Voegelin fellow at the Hoover Institution while working on her book on Nobel poet Joseph Brodsky and his translator, George L. Kline.
Grant Kaplan is professor of historical and systematic theology at Saint Louis University (USA). He is the author of three monographs, including René Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology (University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), Answering the Enlightenment: The Catholic Recovery of Historical Revelation (Crossroad/Herder, 2006), and Faith and Reason through Christian History: A Theological Essay (Catholic University of America Press, 2022). He is the author of many scholarly articles, essays, and reviews in such venues as Theological Studies, America Magazine, Modern Theology, Pro Ecclesia, Newman Studies Journal, and First Things.
Trevor Cribben Merrill teaches French and French literature at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He is the author of The Book of Imitation and Desire (Bloomsbury, 2013) and The Situation of the Catholic Novelist (Wiseblood Books, 2021). He collaborated with Jean-Michel Oughourlian on Psychopolitics: Conversations with Trevor Cribben Merrill (Michigan State University Press, 2012) and co-edited René Girard’s La Conversion de l’art (Grasset, 2023) with Benoît Chantre. He is co-producer of the documentary film Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of René Girard.
