William Johnsen is former graduate chair and coordinator of undergraduate programs in the Department of English at Michigan State University, editor of “Contagion: The Journal of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion”, and general editor of "Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture” a book series through Michigan State University Press.

We talk about his work spreading the ideas of René Girard, imitation, mimesis & the internet, the role of the scapegoat, Girard’s radical interpretation of the crucifixion, his criticism of Nietzsche’s Slave Morality, his prescience in calling political correctness a new totalitarianism, the limits of imitative desire, & the paradox of differentiation.