Paul Gifford

Modern literature and ideas, particularly in relation to the changing scientific, philosophic, religious and cultural context of the period 1870-1945. He is the author of critical studies in French and English of the poet and thinker Paul Valiry, has edited collections of essays on the problems of personal identity (self and subject) and collective identity, and written books on the problems of love and desire in twentieth-century French writing

Predominantly: in the field of René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, particularly as it relates to neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory and to its implications for anthropology, theology and culture theory.

Please see Co-edited proceedings of international symposia organised at the Universities of Cambridge and Stanford, Ca.:

 Antonello, Pierpaolo and Paul Gifford (eds) (2015a).  Can We Survive our Origins? Readings in Rene Girard’s Theory of Violence and the Sacred. Forward by Rowan Williams. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

-------- ( eds) (2015b). How We Became Human. Mimetic Theory and the Science of Evolutionary Origins. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

CURRENT PROJECT: THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF MIMETIC THEORY Edited by Scott Cowdell, Joel Hodge and Chris Fleming (2026, forthcoming).

PLEASE SEE, in this forthcoming work, the COMPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY supplied by hyperlink for the following chapters (‘Suggestions for Further Reading’):-

Chapter 4 ‘Evolution and Hominization’ (sole author)

Barbour, I, 2004. Creation and the World of Science: the Reshaping of Belief, revised ed .Oxford and New York.

Brooke, John Hedley, ‘The Relations between Darwin’s Science and his Religion’ in Darwin and Divinity, ed. John Durant, 40-75. Oxford: Blackwell , 1985. 

Dawkins, R., 1995, River out of Eden : a Darwinian View of life’ London: Phoenix.

---------, 2006.The God Delusion, London: Bantam.

 Finamore, S., 2015.   Review of Antonello and Gifford (eds), Can we Survive our Origns, COV&R Bulletin 46, 8-10.

Gruenler, C. 2019, Review of  Antonello and Gifford (eds), How We Became Human: COV&R Bulletin  61, 29-32.

 Haught, John  2000 . God after Darwin: a Theology of Evolution (Boulder and Oxford)

Morris, Conway, 2003. Life’s solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely universe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

McGrath, Alister E.(2004) God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life. Oxford, Blackwell.

------(2007), with Joanna Collicut McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion. Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine. London: SPCK, 2007

 McKenna, Andrew J., 2015.  ‘Darwin and Girard: Natural and Human Science’. The Raven Foundation Online, 1-7.

Chapter 24 ‘Archaeology and Human Origins’(co-authored with Pierpaolo Antonello)

Bloch, M. (2008), ‘Why Religion Is Nothing Special but Is Central’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, June: 2055–2062.

—— (2010), ‘Is There Religion at Çatalhöyük or Are There Just Houses?’, in I. Hodder (ed.), Religion in the Emergence of Civilisation: Çatalhöyük as a Case Study, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 146–162.

Descola, P. (2013), Beyond Nature and Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Durkheim, E. (1912), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Carol Cosman, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Eliade, M. (1957), The Sacred and the Profane, trans. Willard R. Trask, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Hodder, I,  ed. (2010), Religion in the Emergence of Civilisation: Çatalhöyük as a Case Study, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

——, ed. (2014), Religion at Work in a Neolithic Society: Vital Matters, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

——, ed. (2018), Religion, History and Place in the Origin of Settled Life, Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Pinker, S. (2011), The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Scubla, L. (2016), Giving Life, Giving Death, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Smith, J. Z. (1987), ‘The Domestication of Sacrifice’, in R. Hamerton-Kelley (ed.), Violent Origins, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Schwager, R. (2006), Banished from Eden: Original Sin and Evolutionary Theory in the Drama of Salvation, Leominster: Gracewing.

Ward, Keith, 1996. God, Chance and Necessity. Oxford: One World.

Wilson, E.O. 1975. Sociobiology: the New Synthesis. Cambridge MA: Bellknap Press/Harvard

 University Press

-----. 1978. On human Nature. Cambridge MA. Harvard University Press.

Especially relevant to both chapters:

Gifford,  Paul (2020). Towards Reconciliation. Understanding Violence and the Sacred after René Girard: Cambridge: James Clarke.