Presenters
Benjamin Barber completed his MA in English at the University of Victoria, where he wrote a thesis on René Girard, GA, and Renaissance drama. He is currently a SSHRC doctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa, where he is writing a dissertation on Shakespeare and Byron. He has published articles on generative anthropology and mimetic theory in Anthropoetics and Contagion.
Andrew Bartlett teaches academic writing and literary criticism at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. He has published poems, book reviews, articles on Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy, and essays in generative anthropology. He is an active member of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion and president of GASC, the Generative Anthropology Society and Conference. His interpretation of the Frankenstein myth in the light of the originary hypothesis, Mad Scientist, Impossible Human, is forthcoming from the Davies Group Publishers. He lives in Vancouver with his partner Joanne and their West Highland terrier, Ceilidgh.
Evelyn Cobley is Professor of English at the University of Victoria. A comparativist by training, she has published Modernism and the Culture of Efficiency: Ideology and Fiction (U of Toronto Press, 2009), Temptations of Faust: The Logic of Fascism and Postmodern Archaeologies of Modernity (U of Toronto Press, 2002), and Representing War: Form and Ideology in First World War Narratives (U of Toronto Press, 1993).
Ian Dennis is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. He is currently serving as Secretary-Treasurer of the Generative Anthropology Society and Conference (GASC). He is the author of four novels, of the Girardian study Nationalism and Desire in Early Historical Fiction (Macmillan 1997), and of Lord Byron and the History of Desire (Delaware 2009), a work of literary criticism making substantial use of both mimetic theory and generative anthropology. With Stacey Meeker, he organized the 2013 GASC conference in Los Angeles.
George Dunn teaches at the University of Indianapolis and Ningbo Institute of Technology, China
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Chris Fleming is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. His research interests include theatre and performance, the philosophy of science, and anthropology. As well as in Anthropoetics, he has published in journals such as Body & Society, Modern Drama, and Public Understanding of Science. His book René Girard: Violence and Mimesis was published in 2004 by Polity Press and he is co-author (with Emma Jane) of Modern Conspiracy: Conspiracy Theory and Its Cultured Despisers (forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press).
Raphael Foshay is Associate Professor at Athabasca University where he teaches in the MA Program in Integrated Studies. He works on the relations between philosophy and literary theory and is currently writing on mimesis and dialectic. He also works in the area of comparative east/west philosophy, with a particular interest in Buddhism. He is the author of Wyndham Lewis and the Avant-Garde: The Politics of the Intellect (McGill-Queen’s UP, 1993) and the editor of three books, including most recently Valences of Interdisciplinarity: Theory, Practice, Pedagogy (Athabasca UP, 2011).
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Peter Goldman is Professor of English at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. He serves on the editorial board for Anthropoetics and is also a board member of the Generative Anthropology Society & Conference (GASC). He teaches classes on Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, and film studies. His publications include articles on Shakespeare, Reformation literature, film studies, generative anthropology, and Kafka. His current project is a book on Shakespeare and the problem of iconoclasm.
Sandor Goodhart is Associate Professor of English and Jewish Studies at Purdue University. He is the author of The Prophetic Law. Essays in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Studies, and the Ethical (Michigan State UP, 2014) and Sacrificing Commentary: Reading the End of Literature (Johns Hopkins UP, 1996). He co-edited (with Anne Astell) Sacrifice, Scripture, and Substitution: Readings in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (Notre Dame UP, 2011) and (with Jørgen Jørgenson, Tom Ryba, and James G. Williams) For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and Truth (Michigan State UP, 2009).
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Victoria. She is the founder and Director of The Map of Early Modern London. She is also the Assistant Coordinating Editor of Internet Shakespeare Editions. She has taught at Queen’s University, the Summer Academy at the Stratford Festival, the University of Windsor, and the University of Victoria. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, Elizabethan Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism, and The Silver Society Journal. Her book chapters have appeared (or will appear) in Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2007), Approaches to Teaching Othello (Modern Language Association, 2005), Shakespeare, Language and the Stage, The Fifth Wall: Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism, Performance and Theatre Studies (Arden/Thomson Learning, 2005), Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society (Brill, 2004), New Directions in the Geohumanities: Art, Text, and History at the Edge of Place (Routledge, 2011), and Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives (MLA, 2014). She is currently working on an edition of The Merchant of Venice for ISE and Broadview, and an edition of Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for Digital Renaissance Editions. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith, she is co-editing a volume entitled Shakespeare's Language in Digital Media (under contract with Ashgate).
William Johnsen is Professor of English at Michigan State University and editor-in-chief of Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. He is the author of Violence and Modernism: Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf (U of Florida P, 2003) and editor of the MSU Press series: Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture.
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Adam Katz is Assistant Professor of English at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. He is the editor of The Originary Hypothesis: A Minimal Proposal for Humanistic Inquiry (Davies Group Publishers, 2007), and is presently at work on a new book on and in originary thinking tentatively titled Beginnings in the Middle: Originary Grammar, Remembering Firstness and Retrieving the Ostensive in Modern Semiosis. He is author of Postmodernism and the Politics of Culture (Westview Press, 2000) and has published articles in Anthropoetics, Angelaki, Cultural Studies, Mosaic, and Texas Studies in Literature and Language.
Amir Khan received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Ottawa where he wrote a dissertation on Shakespeare and counterfactual thinking under the direction of Professor Ian Dennis. He has published articles on topics in literature and film studies, and is very interested in the work of Stanley Cavell. Recent work includes "My Kingdom for a Ghost: Counterfactual Thinking and Hamlet" forthcoming in Shakespeare Quarterly.
Richard J. Lane is the author or editor of eleven academic books and numerous essays on literary theory (poststructuralism, postcolonialism, Benjamin, Derrida, Baudrillard, the sublime, the theological turn, theories of the sacred), including Beckett and Philosophy (2002), Functions of the Derrida Archive (2003), Reading Walter Benjamin (2005), Fifty Key Literary Theorists (2006), and most recently Global Literary Theory (2013). Lane directs the Seminar for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and the Literary Theory Research Group at Vancouver Island University, where he is also the Principal Investigator at the MeTA Digital Humanities Lab, supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the BC Knowledge Development Fund. Lane is also a Director of Innovation Island Technology Association, as well as being as Associated Researcher at The Electronic Textual Cultures Lab, at The University of Victoria.
Marina Ludwigs teaches English Literature at Stockholm University. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine and has worked with, and presented papers on, both Girardian theory and generative anthropology. She is currently writing a book on the anthropological structures of epiphanies.
Benjamin Matthews teaches in Newcastle International College at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he received his PhD, in 2010, from the School of Design, Communication, and Information Technology. He recently moved into the creative industries, accepting a fulltime position at Headjam, a creative studio based in Newcastle.
Kenneth Mayers teaches Arabic, English, History, and French at the Bergen County Academies, a public magnet high school in Hackensack, New Jersey. He holds a BA in General Arts and Sciences from the Pennsylvania State University, and a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA in 1995. Mayers began studying with Eric Gans in 1984, and attended Generative Anthropology seminars beginning in 1987. He has continued to follow the progress of the field as an independent scholar. In addition to teaching and wide-ranging administrative duties at BCA, Mayers has been actively involved in human rights work, mainly through Amnesty International. He has managed teams of professional interpreters and translators and served as the Vice Chair of the AIUSA Board of Directors. Mayers is currently the Algeria Country Specialist for AIUSA within the Middle East and North Africa Coordination Group.
Andrew McKenna is professor of French at Loyola University Chicago and a member of the Anthropoetics editorial board. He is the author of Violence and Difference: Girard, Derrida, and Deconstruction (U of Illinois P, 1992), as well as of numerous articles on Moliere, Pascal, Racine, Baudelaire, Flaubert, and critical theory. Between 1996 and 2006, he was editor-in-chief of Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture.
Stacey Meeker is a doctoral candidate in Library and Information Science at UCLA. She has a Master’s degree in LIS from UCLA and a Master’s degree in French from the University of Kansas. She has published in Anthropoetics, Interactions: UCLA Journal for Education and Information Studies, and Paroles gelées. With Ian Dennis, she organized the 2013 GASC conference in Los Angeles.
John O’Carroll is co-author with Bob Hodge of Borderwork in Multicultural Australia (2006) and, with Chris McGillion, of Our Fathers: What Australian Catholic Priests Really Think about their Lives and their Church (2011). With Chris Fleming, he has published numerous articles in a variety of journals, especially Anthropoetics, and with him has contributed to The Originary Hypothesis: A Minimal Proposal for Humanistic Inquiry (Davies Group Publishers, 2007). He also writes about literature (particularly Australian and Pacific literatures) and teaches in Australia (and before that, in Fiji). He is currently a lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia.
Robert Rois teaches Spanish at Valley College in Los Angeles. Born in Havana, he left Cuba with his parents, first wave political refugees of the 60’s. His alma mater is UC Berkeley. After a year at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris studying Medieval French, he finished a Ph.D. in Romance Linguistics and Literature at UCLA. He resides in California.
Keith Russell is a senior lecturer in Communication at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has published in the area of Manga/Anime and the Glimpse as well as Design Philosophy and Theory. His PhD thesis “Kenosis, Katharsis, Kairoisis: A Theory of Literary Affects” offers an account of affects as identity structures.
Kris Rutten is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Educational Studies, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium. He studied Art History and Comparative Cultural Studies and obtained a PhD in Educational Sciences with a dissertation entitled “The rhetorical and narrative turn: Explorations in education.” His main research interests are (new) rhetoric, cultural studies, literacy studies, educational theory, and qualitative research methodology. He recently published in the British Journal of Social Work, in the Journal of Curriculum Studies, in Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, and in Studies in Philosophy and Education. Website: http://www.cultureeducation.ugent.be/
Samuel Sackeroff is a SSHRC doctoral fellow and PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. He holds MA and BA degrees in Art History from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Matthew Schneider is a Professor of English and Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at High Point University in High Point, North Carolina. He holds a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley, an MA from the University of Chicago, and PhD in English from UCLA in 1991. A founding member of the first Generative Anthropology seminar with Eric Gans at UCLA in 1987, Schneider has continued his involvement with GA for more than twenty-five years, contributing six articles to Anthropoetics, guest-authoring two Chronicles of Love and Resentment, and publishing an essay in Adam Katz’s The Originary Hypothesis. He has published two books, the latest of which, The Long and Winding Road from Blake to the Beatles, came out from Palgrave Macmillan in June 2008. His articles on nineteenth-century British literature, literary theory, and Biblical exegesis have appeared in Dalhousie Review, European Romantic Review, Poetics Today, Legal Studies Forum, and Symbiosis.
Ronald Soetaert is a full-time professor at the Department of Educational Studies, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent, Belgium. His teaching and research focuses on education (art, languages and literature), rhetoric, media, literacy and culture. He has published on the teaching of literature, on the culture of reading, and on computer games. He has published his work in the Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies, the European Journal of Cultural Studies and the Journal of Curriculum Studies. Website: http://www.cultureeducation.ugent.be/
Kieran Stewart is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Western Sydney. He received a first class honors in 2012 for his thesis on the re-articulation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy as akin to the phenomenon of shamanism. His doctoral dissertation, supervised by Dr. Chris Fleming, compares the work of Eric Gans and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Matthew Taylor is Professor of English at Kinjo Gakuin University in Nagoya, Japan. He teaches courses in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), academic writing, teacher training, and culture. He has written and presented on EFL pedagogy, literature, and mimetic theory. He has co-authored textbooks for EFL students, including two for academic writing (Cengage Learning) and one for oral communication skills (Macmillan Languagehouse). In four articles for Anthropoetics, he considers the mimetic elements in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and the phenomenon of social isolation in Japan.
Kwasu Tembo is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English Literature at Edinburgh University. His dissertation, "Project Zarathustra: Superman," is a crticial evalutation of the concept of the superbeing in comic books. He holds a Master’s degree in Critical Theory from Edinburgh University and an Honor’s degree in English literature from the University of Victoria.
Richard van Oort is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria. He is the author of The End of Literature: Essays in Anthropological Aesthetics (Davies Group, 2009) and has published on topics in literature and culture in Anthropoetics, Contagion, Criticism, Fictions, New Literary History, Poetics Today, and symploke. His current project (“Shakespeare’s Big Men”) is a study of Shakespearean tragedy.
Edmond Wright holds degrees in English and philosophy and a doctorate in philosophy. He is a member of the Board of Social Theory of the International Sociological Association, and was sometime a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for the Advanced Study of the Social Sciences, Uppsala. He has edited The Ironic Discourse (Poetics Today, 4, 1983), New Representationalisms: Essays in the Philosophy of Perception (Avebury, 1993), Faith and the Real (Paragraph, 24, 2001), and The Case for Qualia (MIT Press, 2008), and has co-edited with his wife Elizabeth The Zizek Reader (Blackwell, 1999) and is author of Narrative, Perception, Language, and Faith (Macmillan, 2005). Over sixty articles of his have appeared in the philosophical journals. He has also published two volumes of poetry.
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