Faculty

Joseph M. Bryant is a historical sociologist whose research has focused primarily on classical antiquity: its politics, modes of war-making, economic practices, and its cultural achievements in the arts and philosophical inquiry. He is currently engaged in research on the rise of Christianity, seeking to explicate the social forces that enabled an illegal and marginalized [...]

Simon Coleman is a Chancellor Jackman Chaired Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion. He came to the U of T in 2010 from Sussex University, where he had been since 2004, having spent 11 years before that at Durham University as Lecturer and then Reader in Anthropology, and Deputy Dean for the [...]

Arti Dhand is associate professor in the Department for the Study of Religion. Her areas of interest include the Mahabharata and the Ramayana Hindu epics, Hindu ethics, gender issues in Hinduism, and religion and sexuality. She is the author of Woman as Fire, Woman as Sage: Sexual Ideology in the Mahabharata (2008) and numerous articles on [...]

James Dicenso is Associate Professor to the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion. His areas of interest include modern philosophy of religion, psychoanalysis and religion, and contemporary continental thought. More specifically, he works on enlightenment and post-enlightenment interpretations of religion, intersections among religion, ethics, and politics, critical and constructive approaches to religion, and [...]

Christoph Emmrich, Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, engages with fields as diverse as Newar Buddhism, Pali and Burmese literature and Tamil Jainism. He has recently been working on and with Newar girls and young women in the Kathmandu Valley (Nepal) studying their involvement in Buddhist practices related to marriage, image consecration, temporary ordination and female [...]

Harry Fox, Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, teaches Judaism of late antiquity, Talmudic, rabbinic and geonic literature, and modern Hebrew literature. He is the author, with Justin Lewis, of Pious Women: A Yiddish Renaissance Defense of Women, [...]

Frances Garrett is Associate Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, and Associate Chair of the Department for the Study of Religion, where she has taught since 2003. Her research focuses on Tibetan religious history and its relations with other forms of Tibetan intellectual and literary culture, especially medicine. Her work has addressed the [...]

Amanda Goodman received a B.A. in Chinese and Comparative Literature from Indiana University and an M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan. She is completing her doctoral dissertation for the Berkeley Buddhist Studies program with a focus on Tang-Song Chinese Esoteric Buddhism. Her dissertation research centers on a number of recovered Dunhuang manuscripts, specifically [...]

Kenneth Hart Green has been teaching in the Department since 1987. As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto in the 1970s, he was introduced to Jewish philosophy by Emil Fackenheim. Green pursued graduate studies at Brandeis University and received his Ph.D. in 1989 supervised by Marvin Fox. Green’s major research interest has been the [...]

Leslie Hayes completed a Bachelor of Arts at University of California Berkeley, an MTS at Harvard University, and she is now a Ph.D. Candidate at Claremont Graduate University in California. Her research focuses on Early and Medieval Christianity, gender, authority, and holiness. She is currently teaching  courses on magic and witchcraft in the medieval and [...]

Jennifer Harris is cross-appointed to the Department of Religion, with her primary appointment at St. Michael’s College. She received her Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and PhD at University of  Toronto. Her current research areas include the place of the Jerusalem Temple in the early church and in the Christian Middle Ages; the experience [...]

Pamela Klassen is Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and has been at U of T since 1997.  My most recent book, Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity, is published with University of California Press, 2011.  My current research focuses on the intersection of Christianity, colonialism, and the (social) sciences in [...]

John S. Kloppenborg is a specialist in Christian origins and second Temple Judaism, in particular the Jesus tradition (the canonical and non canonical gospels), and the social world of the early Jesus movement in Jewish Palestine and in the cities of the eastern Empire. He was written extensively on the Synoptic Sayings Gospel (Q) and [...]

John Marshall joined the Department for the Study of Religion in 2000.  His graduate study at Princeton University in religions of late antiquity generated an abiding interest in religious boundary crossing in the ancient world.  Professor Marshall is cross appointed to the Centre for Jewish Studies and the Department of Classics. His current academic interests [...]

Ruth Marshall’s academic interests include religion and politics, African politics and post-colonial theory, political philosophy, transnational religion, and Pentecostalism. Her research focuses on Africa, especially West Africa, with a focus on transnational religion, war and violence, youth militias, citizenship, ethno-nationalism, autochthony, and international interventionism.  Some of her publications include “Prospérité Miraculeuse: Les pasteurs pentecôtistes [...]

Reid B. Locklin is Associate Professor of Christianity and the Intellectual Tradition at the University of Toronto, a joint appointment with the St. Michael’s College Christianity and Culture Programme and the Centre for the Study of Religion. His research focuses on a range of issues in Comparative Theology and Hindu-Christian Studies, particularly the engagement [...]

Amira Mittermaier is an Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilization. She received her Ph.D. in socio-cultural anthropology from Columbia University. Bringing together textual analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, her research to date has focused on modern Islam in Egypt. Her first book, Dreams [...]

Judith H. Newman is Associate Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Emmanuel College and holds a joint appointment with the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion in the area of early Judaism and a cross-appointment to the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. Her current research interests [...]

David Novak was born in Chicago, Illinois on 19 August 1941. He received his A.B. from the University of Chicago on 10 June 1961, and from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America he received his M.H.L. (Master of Hebrew Literature) on 7 June 1964 and his rabbinical diploma on 5 June 1966. He received his [...]

A cultural anthropologist and scholar of American religion, Kevin Lewis O’Neill is an Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies. He taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, before arriving at the University of Toronto in 2009. With over a decade of research in and on [...]

Professor Srilata Raman’s academic interests include Sanskrit and Tamil intellectual formations in South India from pre-colonial times to modernity, neo-Hinduism, Colonial Sainthood and modern Tamil literature. She completed her B.A in New Delhi, India, her MPhil at Oxford University,  and PhD in Tübingen, Germany. She is the author of Self-Surrender (Prapatt)i to God in Srīvaiṣṇavism. [...]

Ajay Rao is currently an assistant professor in the Department and Center for the Study of Religion, and in the Department of Historical Studies at University of Toronto, Mississauga. He completed his Bachelor of Arts and Masters at the University of Michigan. He also received a Masters in Chicago, where he later completed his Ph.D. [...]

Keren Tova Rubinstein received her PhD in Creative Writing and Israeli Literature from Monash University in 2010. Her interdisciplinary doctoral research focused on Israeli life narratives and counter-narratives, collective and contested identity. She has also completed an MA at the University of Melbourne, where she explored Israeli military fiction as a window onto the country’s [...]

Karen Ruffle holds a joint appointment in history of religions and women’s and gender studies in the Department of Historical Studies at UTM, and teaches graduate courses in the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion. Ruffle obtained her B.A. in Religion from Middlebury College and her M.A. and PhD in Religious Studies with [...]

Kyle Smith, Assistant Professor of Religion (UTSG) and Historical Studies (UTM), studies early Christianity. His primary research focus is late ancient Syriac Christianity on the eastern Roman frontier and in the Sasanian Persian Empire. Currently, Smith is in the process of completing two books: the first is a Syriac-English edition of the martyr acts of [...]

Walid Saleh was born in Colombia to immigrant Lebanese parents, who soon returned the family to the Middle East so the children would learn Arabic. He grew up in Lebanon during the 70′s and 80′s. Dr. Saleh’s undergraduate degree was at the American University of Beirut, where he studied Arabic literature and language. His interest [...]

Dr. Shafique N. Virani is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Toronto. He was previously on the faculty of Harvard University and was later the Head of World Humanities at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. After earning a joint honours degree with distinction in Religious Studies and Middle East Studies and [...]