Depart

Vehicles depart from The Mayflower Hotel (central meeting point) to Catholic University for the start of the conference.

Registration & Breakfast

Registration & Breakfast available for attendees

Opening Remarks

President Kilpatrick and Luke Burgis welcome attendees.

Feature Panel #1—Double Consciousness, Double Blind: Race and Cultural Desire Through a Girardian Lens

Moderator:
Hollis Robbins
Speakers:
Thomas Chatterton Williams
Coleman Hughes
Lester Spence

Keynote: Nihilism Is Not Enough

Speaker:
Peter Thiel

Break

Concurrent Sessions #1

Choose one among six panels or presentations running simultaneously.

Panel—Imitation, Innovation, and Heresy in the Digital Public Sphere

Moderator:
Geoff Shullenberger
Speakers:
Katherine Dee
Tara Isabella Burton
Nathan Allebach

Panel—The Medium is the Mimesis: McLuhan, Girard, and the Technologies of Imitation

Moderator:
Jon Askonas
Speakers:
Andrew McLuhan
Brett Robinson
Michael Murphy

Panel—Law, Desire, and Rivalry

Moderator:
Andreas Widmer
Speakers:
Ryan Meade
Chris Conway
Edward David

Presentation—Rulers of This World or Triumph of the Cross: René Girard and Dietrich von Hildebrand on Liturgy and Resistance to Mimetic Contagion

Presented by:
Michael Matheson Miller

Presentation—The Underground Spirit

Presented by:
Darryl Cooper

Presentation—Fixtures, Forces, and Friends: The Twin Odysseys of René Girard and Bob Dylan

Presented By:
Jeff Takacs

Lunch

Lunch Panel—Architects of Desire: Building Brands, Teams, and Culture

Moderator:
Luke Burgis
Speakers:
Alexandra Winokur
Craig Robins
Ryan Resch

Feature Panel #2— Even Better Than The Real Thing: The New Media Landscape

Moderator:
Ross Douthat
Speakers:
Walter Kirn
Hamish McKenzie
Renée DiResta

Break

Snacks available

Concurrent Sessions #2

Choose one among six panels or presentations running simultaneously.

Panel—Deceit, Desire, and the Contemporary Novelist

Moderator:
Kevin Rulo
Speakers:
A. Natasha Joukovsky
Brandon Taylor
Trevor Cribben Merrill

Panel—Discerning True Freedom: Navigating a Pathway Through One's Internal World to Find Thick Desire and a Life of Integrity

Moderator:
Julie Barrios
Speakers:
Cynthia Haven
Rev. Robert Sirico
Johnathan Bi

Panel—Political Atheism: René Girard and the Mediation of Political Desire

Moderator:
Justin Lee
Speakers:
Joshua Mitchell
Shadi Hamid
Jerry Bowyer

Presentation—"Things Hidden": Mimesis, Technology, and the Apocalypse

Presented by:
Tobias Huber
Byrne Hobart

Presentations—Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better: Inexorable Envy and the Dangerous Ideology of Socialism / The Founding Murder in Virgil's Aeneid

Presented by:
Sherry Ning
Annika Nordquist

Presentation—It's Not About Who Started It, But That We're All A Part Of It. Toward an Ethos of Insecurity

Presented By:
Fr. Elias Carr

Break

Concurrent Sessions #3

Choose one among five panels or presentations running simultaneously.

Panel—Beyond Deceit: René Girard and Luigi Giussani on the Meaning of Desire

Moderator:
Brandon Vaidyanthan
Speakers:
Maria Elena Monzani
Tyler Graham
Thomas Deutsch

Panel— Human Flourishing and the Three-City Problem: Athens, Jerusalem, and Silicon Valley

Moderator:
Bill Gonch
Speakers:
Jeff Frank
Paul Dragos Aligica
Clay Routledge

Presentation—Mimesis and Thumos: A Synthesis of Girardian and Platonic-Scholastic Psychology

Presented By:
Mark Shiffman

Presentation—Towards a Girardian Critique of Ideology

Presented By:
Geoff Shullenberger

Presentation—René Girard and the Eschatological Problem of Technology

Presented by:
Jon Askonas

Break

Closing Remarks (Plenary Session)

Speakers:
Luke Burgis
Martin Girard

Depart

Vehicles depart from Catholic University at 5:45pm to the The Mayflower Hotel for cocktail reception and dinner gala

Cocktail Reception

Centennial Gala Dinner