From the Editor

I am very pleased with this issue. It is always a pleasure to read again work from authors I have followed closely for years, above all René Girard, but it is also a delight to be surprised by new authors with new ways of reasoning and assembling “matter” (as Milton called it).

I thank my assistant Sun Jai Kim, 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 their support of our series of books also published by Michigan State University Press. 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.

I deeply regret the passing of Professor Tobin Siebers at the University of Michigan. A former student of René Girard and a long-time member of COV&R and the Editorial Board, he was the kind of productive member associations and universities dream of: a powerhouse of a scholar, he was active and engaged as well in GA, the American Association of Comparative Literature (he served as president), and MLA. Most recently he devoted himself to disability studies. He was lucid, friendly, and a good man.