René Girard, scholar of religion and violence, dies at 91

René Girard, a French scholar best known for his work on desire, violence, and religion, died November 4 at age 91.

Girard immigrated to the United States in 1950, teaching social science at several universities, including Duke and Stanford, from which he retired in 1995.

In a 2001 Christian Century article about Girard’s work, Leo D. Lefebure, a Georgetown University theologian, wrote that Girard “developed a mimetic theory of the self which stresses the power of models in teaching us what to desire.”