The theme of this year's Religion and Society course is “Violence and Religion:  Strangers and Scapegoats in a Time of Terrorism.”  The tools that we will use to investigate this topic derive from the mimetic theory of René Girard.    

In this course, we will look first at the interpersonal dimensions of mimetic violence.  We will use Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as our guide because mimetic desire and violence is often most clearly visible to persons who have never previously thought about it in descriptions found in literature.  The authors of our great works of literature have been experts at describing mimesis, violence, and scapegoating.  Subsequently, we will turn to religion and explore the sacred narratives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in order to understand the phenomenon of scapegoating and mimetic violence within the context of these major Western faith traditions.  Our guide will be Bruce Chilton who has recently published Abraham’s Curse:  The Roots of Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  Finally, we will look at strangers and scapegoats in the contemporary world.  In an effort to understand intersections between mimetic violence and religion in the world today, we will read philosopher Richard Kearney’s, Strangers, Gods and Monsters and psychoanalyst and literary theorist Julia Kristeva’s novel, Murder in Byzantium.