The authors included in this issue all participated in the 2013 GASC at UCLA, although not all their texts are taken from their conference presentations. All are seasoned contributors to Anthropoetics, to which they have now contributed a total of 29 articles. Their contributions range from the political (Chris Fleming-John O’Carroll‘s essay on “Revolution”) to the religio-political (Dawn Perlmutter‘s article on Islamist symbolism) and the literary (Marina Ludwigs‘ analysis of the “Janus” function in narrative) to the philosophical (Raphael Foshay‘s study of GA’s and Heidegger’s readings of classical philosophy, and Edmond Wright‘s rich essay on the epistemology of faith, which offers many parallels with GA’s analyses).

Let me take this final opportunity to thank Stacey Meeker and Ian Dennis for their painstaking editorial work, which covered both this and the previous issue (19, 1). I think all the authors in this volume appreciated their skill and conscientiousness.

About Our Contributors

Chris Fleming is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Rene Girard: Violence and Mimesis and one of the editors of the Bloomsbury series, Violence, Desire and the Sacred. His book, Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid—co-written with Emma A. Jane—is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Press.

John O’Carroll is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Science and Liberal Studies, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst NSW, Australia. His research interests lie in the area of the philosophy of communication, postcolonial theory, and Western epistemologies of landscapes (especially in Australia and the South Pacific). He has also taught at the University of the South Pacific (Fiji Laucala campus).

Raphael Foshay teaches in the MA Program in Integrated Studies at Athabasca University. 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.

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. Her current interest is bringing into dialogue narratology and Generative Anthropology.

Dawn Perlmutter, Director of the Symbol Intelligence Group, is considered one of the leading subject matter experts (SME) in the areas of symbols, unfamiliar customs, ritualistic crimes and religious violence. In her SME capacity, she routinely provides law enforcement and intelligence agencies with specialized information to assist in investigation and analysis. She has advised police departments and prosecutors’ offices on numerous cases of ritual homicide and presented expert witness testimony on ritualistic crimes. As an expert on ritual murder she has been interviewed and appeared on many documentaries and newscasts. She is an adjunct Professor in the Forensic Medicine Program at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, and the author of two books and numerous publications on ritual violence. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from New York University and a Masters Degree from The American University, Washington, D.C. She is an active member of the distinguished Vidocq Society, an exclusive crime-solving organization that solves cold case homicides.

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, forthcoming, May 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.