The Raven Foundation was established in January 2007 by co-founders Keith Ross and Suzanne Ross. In addition to the Rosses, the Foundation is staffed by Adam Ericksen, Emily Martensen and Maura Junius.
Staff
Adam Ericksen, Director of Education
Adam Ericksen is a graduate of Linfield College and Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. At Linfield, he received his BA in Religious Studies, with a minor in History. The title of his Senior Thesis was "The Divine in Disguise: How Judaism Deals with Suffering and Death." He continued this theme with his Honors Thesis, which was titled "The Divine in Disguise: How Christianity Deals with Suffering and Death." Adam received his Masters in Theological Studies from Garrett, focusing on theology and ethics. His Masters Thesis was titled "Love and Nonviolence in Christianity and Islam." Adam was recently introduced to René Girard's work in January of 2007, but Adam's own work has prepared him well for studying Mimetic Theory.
Maura Junius, Marketing Director
Maura Junius graduated from the College of Saint Catherine in St. Paul, MN with a double major in Mathematics and Theater. She continued her studies in the M.F.A. program at SIU – Carbondale in costume design for dance. To Maura, shifting from performing arts to marketing was simply communicating about a different topic. With nearly two decades of marketing experience in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors, she enthusiastically and creatively matches messages to audiences in support of ending scapegoating and creating the possibility of peace.
Emily Martensen, Social Media Director
Emily Martensen graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in International Relations – Political Economy and Development. Her studies before and during college took her to rural, central Mexico, Nicaragua, and Barcelona, Spain which cemented her fluency in Spanish. While studying in Geneva, Switzerland, Emily learned French and held a position at the World Health Organization. Her Senior Thesis was entitled "Integrating Traditional Medicine into International Development". After graduation, Emily returned to her native Chicago and worked at Rush University Medical Center and, later, for a large labor and employment law firm.Emily jumped at the opportunity to be Social Media Director at The Raven Foundation. Having learned about Girard and his ideas in her UCC church in Wilmette, she is excited to be able to devote herself to the international spread of an idea that is so fundamentally important to her.
Board of Directors
Andrew McKenna
Dr. Andrew J. McKenna, professor of French language and literature at Loyola University in Chicago, earned a Ph.D. in Romance Languages [French & Spanish] from Johns Hopkins University after receiving his B.A. in French from Holy Cross College. In addition to acting as the host of the French club, he teaches courses in French Literature of 17th, 19th, 20th centuries, Stylistics, French culture and civilization, and Masterpieces of European Literature and Comparative Literature (in translation). For the decade between 1996 and 2006, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, 1996-2006. Andrew is the author of Violence and Difference: Girard, Derrida, and Deconstruction.
Wherever there is conflict, mimetic theory matters
Mimetic theory makes literature so important
Mimetic theory is so simple...and paradoxical
Mimetic Theory deserves a broader audience
Conflict erases differences
Michael McLean
Michael McLean is a songwriter, composer, author, performer, playwright, film producer and director. He has written music and lyrics for more than 20 albums and has sold over a million tapes and CDs since his first release in 1983. Since 1991, Michael has performed The Forgotten Carols to sold-out audiences throughout the United States. He was the original story writer, producer and director of the film Nora's Christmas Gift starring Academy Award winner Celeste Holm. He was also producer and original story co-writer of the holiday television classic Mr. Krueger's Christmas starring film legend Jimmy Stewart. Other films Michael's written and directed include Together Forever, What Is Real? and The Prodigal Son. In September 2000 his stage musical The Ark, written with Kevin Kelly, was featured in the Festival of New Musicals on Broadway in New York City.
As an ad man, I understood desire
Songs for The Wicked Truth About Love
The Wicked Truth opened my eyes
Making religion reasonable
Tripp Hudgins
Rev. Tripp Hudgins is an ordained American Baptist Minister and presently serves as the pastor of The Community Church of Wilmette in Wilmette, IL. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Richmond (1992). His seminary study began at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond in Richmond, VA and concluded at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL June of 2004 with an MDiv and an MTS in Liturgy.
Tripp has spent much of his adult life serving various congregations as a musician. He moved to the Chicago area in 1997 and has served as a musician at Holy Name Cathedral, St Peter's in the Loop, and North Shore Baptist Church. Ministry for Tripp has included work in the creative arts, as a member of an intentional Christian community and retreat center in Richmond, Richmond Hill, and as a chaplain at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. He also served as part of the pastoral team at Church of Jesus Christ Reconciler.
Tripp is married to Trish Austin, a Chicago-based actress. They have three cats.
Keith Ross, Co-Founder
Keith Ross is a Princeton University graduate who has worked in the financial markets for 30 years. Currently, Keith is engaged with several entrepreneurial ventures. A member of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, he has been a student of René Girard's work and in January 2007, founded The Raven Foundation with his wife, Suzanne, to increase awareness of Girard's ideas. Keith currently serves as the treasurer for the Colloquium on Violence & Religion.
Suzanne Ross, Co-Founder
Suzanne Ross is a graduate of Bucknell University and a certified Montessori educator. She taught preschool and kindergarten before working as a corporate training consultant. As a member of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, she has attended and presented at the annual conferences. In January 2007, she and her husband Keith founded The Raven Foundation to increase awareness of Girardian theory. She currently serves on the Education Committee of Imitatio, Inc. Her first book, The Wicked Truth: When Good People Do Bad Things, examines the lessons of myth, scapegoating and forgiveness in the hit Broadway musical Wicked. Her second book, The Wicked Truth About Love: The Tangles of Desire, explores patterns of romantic love and how to create a fulfilling relationship.
Advisory Board
Jack Miles
Jack Miles is Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies at the University of California, Irvine. In 1996, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for God: A Biography (translated into 16 languages) and is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (2002-2007). Professor Miles was a Jesuit seminarian from 1960 to 1970, studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before completing a doctorate in the department of Near Eastern Languages at Harvard. He has been an editor at Doubleday, executive editor at the University of California Press and literary editor at the Los Angeles Times. His second book, Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, was named a New York Time Notable Book of 2002. His writings have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and The Washington Post among other publications. He is the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Religions (forthcoming).
Honorary Board
René Girard
René Girard is a member of the Académie Francaise, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is Andrew B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature, Stanford University. Internationally renowned for his work on the nexus between violence and religion as well as his “mimetic theory,” René Girard’s publications have been translated into numerous languages, and the secondary literature on his thought numbers in the hundreds of articles and over fifty full-length books. His major works include: Deceit, Desire and the Novel (Hopkins, 1965); Violence and the Sacred (Hopkins, 1978); Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (Stanford, 1987); The Scapegoat (Hopkins, 1986); I See Satan Fall like Lightning (Orbis, 2001). His latest book in French, Achever Clausewitz, was published in 2007. His most recent book in English, Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1965 – 2005 (edited by Robert Doran), was published in May, 2008, on Stanford University Press.
Robert Hamerton-Kelly
Robert Hamerton-Kelly is Senior Research Scholar Emeritus at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University, and is the president of Imitatio Inc., an organization that furthers the study of mimetic theory. As Dean of Chapel and Consulting Professor, he was a full member of the Stanford Faculty. He lectured in Religious Studies, in the Greek section of the Classics, and in the Ethics of International Security in general (Just War Theory and the proper use of military force) and the ethics of nuclear weapons in particular (Deterrence), in the department of Political Science. He retired early from Stanford in 1997 to become Senior Minister of the Woodside Village Church in the vicinity of Stanford, retiring in 2004. Since retirement he continues to host a biweekly seminar with René Girard on the theme of Religion and Violence. He is one of three founding members of the COV&R , and is the author of Pre-existence, Wisdom and the Son of Man ( Cambridge, 1973 / 2004) and Sacred Violence (Fortress, 1992). He has edited Violent Origins: Walter Burkert, René Girard and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation (Stanford, 1986) and Politics and Apocalypse (Michigan, 2007).