Le Moyne College Calendar

French historian, literary critic, and philosopher René Girard spent his career arguing that the Western literary canon revealed a seemingly outlandish secret: all human culture derived from the human compulsion to desire what others desire, a form of mimicry which Girard called “mimetic desire.”

In this talk, Visiting Assistant Professor of English Jamey Graham, Ph.D., will survey Girard’s major literary criticism with the aim of clarifying how mimetic desire relates to the more conventional understanding of “mimesis” as artistic representation. At the same time, Dr. Graham will evaluate Girard’s theory as a possible basis for a new literary criticism—a criticism that escapes the paradoxes of Western metaphysics by replacing the traditional binary of subject and object with Girard’s tripartite schema of subject, object, and mediator. Emphasis will be given to Girard’s oft-overlooked monograph on Shakespeare, "Theater of Envy."

Dr. Graham is a specialist in Renaissance literature. Her research and publications also engage questions of philosophy, history and literary theory. Dr. Graham previously taught at Harvard University, where she earned her Ph.D. in comparative literature and her A. B. in physics.