From the Editor

Preparing well in advance for the sesquicentennial of Origin of the Species, David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber proposed the term “Darwinian research tradition” to identify faithful, revisionary, and resistant work taking its cue from Darwin. There is now a full-fledged Girardian research tradition, which our successive surveys of research across the languages are mapping for us. In this issue we thank Wolfgang Palaver and Dietmar Regensburger of Innsbruck University, Andreas Hetzel of the universities of Darmstadt and Innsbruck, and Gabriel Borrud, their translator, for surveying work in German.

I am very happy to include here the Raymund Schwager Memorial Lecture from COV&R Tokyo 2012, given by Richard Schenk, OP, who is president of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. On the journal cover we have the image of a key letter written by Raymund Schwager to René Girard that is crucial to understanding their fruitful dialog (Auerbach’s term was “wechselseitige Befruchtung”) to be published soon. I thank Józef Niewiadomski of Innsbruck University for the use of this image.

Please recite slowly, aloud, Els Launspach’s biographical entry in the Contributor section, then go to Volume 19 to identify it permanently with the selection from The Buried King, the English translation of her book Messire. By this act you will redeem a mortified editor.

I would like to thank my editorial assistant Christi Taylor for double duty on the journal and the book series, the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, the Michigan State University English Department, the College of Arts and Letters, and the Offices of the Provost and Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies for continued support of the editing and publishing of Contagion as well as Imitatio for its support of our series of books. As Editor, I am especially dependent on the Contagion Editorial Board and many others who have willingly read submissions contributed from a remarkable variety of disciplines. I am grateful for their service.