Susan Wright

Susan Wright, M.A. a member of Theology & Peace since 2007, has served on its organizing committee and the Board of Directors 2013-2019. She was president of Theology & Peace from 2015 to 2018. In 2018 she was elected to the board of COV&R (The Colloquium on Violence & Religion), which she first attended in 2000.

Susan studied theology at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School (1999-2001) where she was recipient of the Charles Bound Fellowship (1999-2001), an Episcopal Evangelism Society Grant, and the Booker Fellowship (1999-2001). She received her MA in Theology from Bexley Hall Episcopal Seminary (2008). In 2009, she was selected a Junior Scholar (2009) by Imitatio, which also provided a grant to fund her blog, NoOutcasts. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Institute, where she received a global innovators scholarship.

Susan’s work encompasses mimetic theory, postmodern philosophy, feminist thought, populism, the Midrash, ANE Wisdom Literature, and Jungian studies. She has presented numerous papers at international conferences and has recently submitted a number of papers for publication. She’s written for a variety of websites: including patheos.com. Her blogs include Girard & Comics, which reads comics through Mimetic Theory; NoOutcasts, 2007-2011, which explored pop-culture through the thought of René Girard and postmodernist thinkers, John Caputo and Jacques Derrida; Spirt Led Life, an online spiritual direction site; and Pillow Talk, which engages feminist thought with Jungian dream interpretation. It also hosts her fictionalized memoir about dreams. From 2007-2011 she hosted Pub(lic) Spirituality, a pub gathering in downtown Syracuse, NY.

Prior to pursuing academic work Susan was active in social and economic justice projects in her local community. She managed the Syracuse Real Food Cooperative, was one the founders of the Westcott Community Development Corporation, and served on the board of CommonWorks, a federation of local cooperatives dedicated to establishing a just economy.

Susan is an active member of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in downtown Syracuse, NY where she has served on the vestry, convened the faith formation program, and directed the children’s faith formation program. From 2015 to 2020, she was a member of the organizing committee for World InterFaith Harmony Assembly of Central New York. In 2022 she will complete the two-year Horizon’s training for spiritual directors.

Susan lives in Syracuse surrounded by her books. She’s employed by SUNY Upstate College of Health Professions. Prior to that she did free lance content editing, website design, and social-media marketing.

Forthcoming Publications:

  • “Victim Testimonies & Roman Firstness in Livy’s Rape of Lucretia.” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology (accepted).
  • “Artificial Intelligence and Mimetic Bondage in Spike Jonze’s Her,” Desiring Machines, edited by Thomas Ryba and Sandor Goodhart, forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press (accepted).
  • “Derrida,” René Girard and the Western Philosophical Tradition, vol. II, edited by Andrea Wilmes, forthcoming from Michigan State University Press (accepted).

Her current research/writing projects include:

  • The Bread of Life…the Problem of Violence: John’s Midrashic Response to the Diminishment of the Eucharist as Archetype.
  • The Rape of Lucretia, the Archetype of the Ravished Woman, and the Epi-Genesis of Western Liberalism.
  • Wisdom’s Travail: The Disfiguration of the Feminine in the Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Tradition. (book manuscript).

Papers and Presentations:

  • “Can a gyno-epigenesis free us from systemic misogyny?” Metamorphoses of Mimesis: Plasticity, Subjectivity and Transformation with Catherine Malabou, KU Leuven, February 23-24, 2023
    (accepted).
  • Inviolate Sacred: Rape Culture, Systemic Misogyny,  & The Birth of the West,” Victim Focus Research Event. London, September 14, 2022.
  • “Dr. Jessica Taylor meets Rene Girard: From Victim Blaming to Victim Focus,” given at Colloquium on Violence & Religion, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia, 2022.
  • “MeToo and Victim Testimonies,” given at Generative Anthropology Conference, University of Ottawa, 2022.
  • “Reviewing Promising Young Woman: Standing at the Crossroads of #MeToo & Mimetic Theory,” Delivered at Colloquium on Violence & Religion, Purdue University, 2021.
  • “Can Anything Good Come of Populism?” Given at the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, Universität Innsbruck, Austria, 2019.
  • “Respect for the Law in an Age of the Escalation to Extremes,” given at Colloquium on Violence & Religion, Regis University, Denver, 2018.
  • “Derrida on Forgiveness,” given at Colloquium on Violence & Religion, Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, Madrid, 2017.
  • “Wisdom’s Travail: The Emergence of ANE Royal Ideology and the Mystification of the Anthropological Sources of Violence,” given at Colloquium on Violence & Religion, Universidad Francisco de Vitoria, Madrid, 2017.
  • “Why Zombies? An Examination of Our Collective Fascination with Zombies,” given at Tribute to René Girard, Saint Paul University, Ottawa (2016).
  • “Rekindling a Sacrificial Crisis in the Eucharist: John’s Midrashic Reversal of the Manna Metaphors in the Bread of Life Discourse,” given at the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne (2016).
  • “The Return of the Sacrificial King: A Ghost in the Mass Killing Machines of the 20th Century,” given at the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, St. Louis University, (2015).
  • “The Epoché of Desire and The Instant of Death,” given at the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, University of Northern Iowa (2013).
  • “Rekindling a Sacrificial Crisis in the Eucharist: John’s Homiletic Deconstruction of the “Manna” Metaphors in the Bread of Life Discourse,” given at The Subverting the Norm Conference, Drury University (2013).
  • “Superheroes, Mimesis and the Gospel,” given at the Theology & Peace Conference, The University of Notre Dame in Maryland (2012).
  • “This Island is Haunted: A Response to René Girard’s Apocalyptic Pessimism in Battling to the End,” given at the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, Salina, Italy (2011).

Contact Info: swright14620@yahoo.com