Callon, Callie
Callie is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Study of Religion. She received both her Hon. B.A and her MA from the University of Toronto, specializing in Christian Origins. Her research interests include Greco-Roman social and cultural history, and how early Christian texts (both canonical and apocryphal) reflect this compositional setting. More specifically, her dissertation will examine the use of physiognomic theory as polemical strategy in early Christian texts.
Email: callie.callon@mail.utoronto.ca
Feller, Yaniv
Yaniv is a PhD student at the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Jewish Studies. He received his B.A (Integrative Program: Philosophy, Political Science and Economics; Amirim Program in Humanities) and M.A (Political Science and German Studies) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main field of interest is modern Jewish thought and he intends to write his dissertation on the philosophy of Leo Baeck. Yaniv is excited about the opportunity to teach the Advanced Modern Hebrew course and is looking forward to introducing the students to some aspects of contemporary Israeli culture.
Email: yaniv.feller@mail.utoronto.ca
Greenberg, Barbara
Barbara completed her MA in Religion and Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa in 2005. Currently she is researching apologies in Canada, using psychoanalysis to examine both the Canadian government and United Church apologies for residential schools.
Email: b.greenberg@utoronto.ca
Hass, Michal
Michal Hass is a native Israeli recently relocated from Tel-Aviv to Toronto. She has taught reading, writing and conversational skills in Hebrew as a foreign language to new immigrant in Israel. In addition to teaching Modern Hebrew at the University of Toronto, she is a Modern Hebrew teacher at the MNjcc Hebrew Institute, as well as at Kachol-Lavan, the Israeli School in Toronto. Michal is also an author and editor, and has translated dozens of professional and scholarly articles in the fields of music and the sciences between English and Hebrew for various universities and private organizations. She has more than 10 years of experience as a college teacher in various subjects, including Hebrew as a foreign language, music, and computers. Michal is fluent in Hebrew, English, and German.
Email: michalstudio@gmail.com
Katz, Yona
Yona Katz is a PhD student at the University of Toronto in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. She is also involved in a collaborative program with the Centre for Jewish Studies. Katz’s B.A. from Bar-Ilan University in Israel is in Hebrew and Comparative Literature, and Jewish Studies. She is currently working on her PhD dissertation with a focus on the poetry of the Israeli poet, Amir Gilboa, specifically his war and Holocaust poems. Katz taught Hebrew literature, Bible and Judaic studies in Israeli and Canadian Jewish day schools. Katz is the course instructor of the MHB/NML255F intermediate Hebrew course in the first semester of 2012/13 academic year.
Email: yona.katz@utoronto.ca
Kleeb, Sarah
Sarah Lynn Kleeb is a Ph.D. Candidate with the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion. Her dissertation examines connections between religion and certain forms of dissent or protest, and the potential limits of dialogue and resistance within particular structures of religious authority. Consideration of these issues is grounded in the theoretical works of Frankfurt School Critical Theorists, and is directed primarily toward the Latin American Liberation Theology movement. Current research and teaching interests include emancipatory theories in religion and philosophy, critical pedagogy, violence in social and religious constructs, religion and (new) media, and
intersubjectivity. Sarah can be reached at sarah.kleeb@mail.utoronto.ca
LaGrone, Matthew
Matthew LaGrone completed his PhD at the University of Toronto (2008). For the past three years, he was a post-doctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Delawares Jewish Studies Program. In 2012-2013, he will be an Anne Tanenbaum Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies. His research areas include Atlantic Judaism (the intellectual and social histories of Judaism in Britain, the United States, and Canada) and the dialogue of Judaism and world religions. He is presently finishing a project on the representations of, and public debates about, religious authority in Victorian
Anglo-Jewry.
Email: matthew.lagrone@utoronto.ca
Last, Richard
Richard is PhD candidate at the Department for the Study of Religion. His dissertation challenges the widespread assumption that becoming a Pauline Christ-believer led to a life of relative isolation, social and ecclesiastical egalitarianism, and disdain for worldly pleasure. In Richard’s dissertation, he argues that the very structure of Paul’s Corinthian congregation cultivated affiliates’ desires for status and honour. Worshipping Christ was a way to enhance one’s status and secure otherwise inaccessible opportunities for honour in first-century Corinth. Recently, he has also begun to study how filmmakers use film style to portray religion in popular and alternative cinema. He will be teaching Religion and Film (RLG 232H1S) this year at the St. George campus. Further information is available at: http://utoronto.academia.edu/RichardLast.
Email: richard.last@utoronto.ca
Levman, Brian
Bryan received his B.A. in English Language and Literature from U of T in 1969, afterwards pursuing a career in Communications & Marketing. He went back to school in 1991, receiving an MSc. (Geology) in 2001 from U of T. Since then he has been studying Buddhism, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali and Classical Chinese, pursuing his interest in isolating Buddha’s earliest teachings through Comparative Philology and other means. He is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Study of Religion at U of T.
Email: bryan.levman@utoronto.ca
Pang, Rachel
Rachel Pang received her BA from the University of Toronto (2005), and MA (2007) and PhD (2011) degrees from the University of Virginia in Religious Studies, specializing in Tibetan and Chinese religion. Her dissertation, entitled “Dissipating Boundaries: the Life, Song-Poems and Non-Sectarian Paradigm of Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol (1781-1851)” is a study of Shabkar’s celebrated spiritual autobiography. Dr. Pang conducted her dissertational fieldwork in the Amdo region of eastern Tibet, Nepal, India, and Bhutan. Currently, her research focuses on Shabkar’s /Collected Works/ in fourteen volumes, the nineteenth-century non-sectarian (Tib. /ris med/) movement in eastern Tibet and Tibetan Buddhist auto/biography.
Email: rachel.pang@utoronto.ca
Pontoriero, Eleanor
B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (University of Toronto). Teaching and research areas include religion and human rights in comparative context. Publications include “Remembering Auschwitz: Emmanuel Levinas on Religion and Violence” in Religion and Violence in a Secular World: Toward a Political Theology, ed. C.V. Crockett. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.
Email: eleanor.pontoriero@utoronto.ca
Richardson, Peter
B.Arch. (Toronto), B.D. (Knox College), Ph.D. (Cambridge); F.R.A.I.C (Hon.); F.R.S.C. Areas of Research: Christian origins in Jewish and Roman contexts; religion, archaeology, and architecture in the Eastern half of the Mediterranean during the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods. Selected publications: “Josephus’s Galilee in Life and War in Archaeological Perspective” (2001); City and Sanctuary: Religion and Architecture in the Roman Near East (2002); “Jesus and Palestinian Social Protest: Archaeological and Literary Perspectives” (2002); Building Jewish in the Roman East (2004); “Study of the Greco-Roman World” (2006); “Khirbet Qana (and Other Villages) as a Context for Jesus” (2006); “The Beginnings of Christian Anti-Judaism”(2006); (with Douglas Richardson and John de Visser) Canadian Churches, an Architectural History (2007); “Jewish Galilee, its Hellenization, Romanization, and Commercialization” (2008). Festschrift presented in 2000: (Stephen Wilson and Michel Desjardins, eds.) Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson. Contact: Dept. and Centre for the Study of Religion, Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street, 3rd Floor,Toronto ON M5R 2M8
Email: prchrdsn@chass.utoronto.ca
Rollens, Sarah
Sarah is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Study of Religion at U of T. She received a B.A. in Religion and Sociology from University of North Carolina Wilmington and an M.A. in Religious Studies at University of Alberta. Her research focuses on Christian origins and the social context of the earliest Jesus movement, especially as it is evidenced in the Q document. Her other research interests include the Synoptic Problem, the historical Jesus, the social and economic structures of the Graeco-Roman world, and methods and theories for studying religion.
Email: sarah.rollens@utoronto.ca
Septimus, Zvi
Zvi is Anne Tanenbaum Post-Doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. He was previously Alan M. Stroock Fellow for Advanced Research in Judaica at Harvard University. He received both his BA in Near Eastern Studies and PhD in Jewish Studies from UC Berkeley. Zvi’s dissertation explored the role of the reader in the creation of the Talmud. He is currently revising a book manuscript entitled “Who Wrote the Talmud?” His primary research focuses on reader-oriented literary theories and classical rabbinic texts. His other projects include an analysis of the interpretive methodology used by Rashi in his commentary on the Talmud and an exploration of sexual ethics—and attitudes toward alternatives to permanent marriage—in the late antique and medieval eras.
Email: zseptimus@yahoo.com
Sherab, Kunga
Khenpo Kunga is a “scholar in residence” in the Department for the Study of Religion, assisting with student and faculty research and teaching in Tibetan Studies. Khenpo Kunga is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and scholar who received the advanced title of Khenpo (“abbot”) in 2005, the culmination of more than 20 years of study and teaching at the Dzongsar Institute for Advanced Studies of Buddhist Philosophy and Research in India. He is the author of several works on Buddhist philosophy in Tibetan.
Email: khenpokunga@gmail.com
Steinschneider, Eric
Eric Steinschneider received his B.A. in 2005 at the University of Rochester and his Master’s degree in 2009 from Harvard Divinity School. He has been conducting doctoral research at the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto since 2009. In the winter of 2012, Eric will be teaching a course on Hindu ritual and ritual theory (RLG363). Eric’s interests include early modern South Asian religion, Srividya, and Sanskrit intellectual history and intellectual culture.
Email: eric.steinschneider@utoronto.ca
Vearncombe, Erin
Erin received her B.A. (Honours) from Queen’s University (Religious Studies) in 2003 and her M.A. from the University of St. Michael’s College (New Testament Studies) in 2007. She is now at the dissertation stage of her doctoral studies, focusing on the role of clothing in the communication of status and gender in the ancient eastern Mediterranean.
Email: erin.vearncombe@utoronto.ca
Wood, Ben
Ben completed a BA in Asian Religions from McGill University and an MA in Buddhist Studies from SOAS before beginning his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto in 2006. Ben’s research focuses on narratives of cosmologies, or states or planes of existence, in Indian and Tibetan literature. He is currently completing a project on fourteenth-century cosmological narrative inscriptions that accompany physical universe paintings at Shalu Monastery in Central Tibet, a site that Ben visited in the summer of 2007.
E-mail: ben.wood@utoronto.ca