Nicholas Dion
Nicholas completed his B.A. and M.A. at McGill and is currently a doctoral candidate at the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. In the winter of 2011, he will be teaching a special topics course on sacred space (RLG380). In the past, he has taught courses on ‘Jung’s Theories of Religion’ (RLG302),’Religion in the Public Sphere: Reasonable Accommodation’ (RLG380, at UTM), and ‘New Religious Movements’ (at McGill). His research interests include the psychoanalytic critique of religion, theories of space, religion in the public sphere, and the philosophy of Peter Sloterdijk. Nick’s dissertation research investigates the role of space in Freudian psychoanalysis and its place in the Freudian critique of religion. He can be reached by email is always willing to meet with students.
Email: nicholas.dion@utoronto.ca
Barbara Greenberg
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
Rebekka King
Rebekka King’s research examines North America Christianity and the consumption of popular theological texts. In particular she is interested in anthropology of religion, the sociology of knowledge, discourse analysis and the ways that religious agents construct their identities and negotiate the public sphere. Her dissertation involves a linguistic and ethnographic analysis of progressive Christianity and contributes to the emergence of the anthropology of Christianity as a distinctive field of study. In the Fall of 2011, Rebekka will be teaching ‘RLG308: Religion and the City’ and co-teaching ‘RLG304: Language, Symbols, Self’ with Nicholas Dion. She is especially interested in pedagogical theory and seeks to integrate emerging trends in education and classroom accessibility into the courses she teaches. Further information is available http://rebekkaking.wordpress.com.
Email: rebekka.king@utoronto.ca
Tim Langille
Tim Langille completed his BA Honours and MA in Religious Studies at University of Alberta. He works in the areas of Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, Holocaust studies, and cultural memory and trauma. His dissertation focuses on the ways in which cultural memories of trauma function as intergenerational sites of memory that are revisited by later groups and extended into their social worlds. Further information is available at http://utoronto.academia.edu/TimLangille.
Email: tim.langille@utoronto.ca
Richard Last
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
Brian Levman
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
Thomas McIntire
B.A. (Shelton), M.A. (Pennsylvania), M.Div. (Faith), Ph.D. (Pennsylvania). Graduate Director/Associate Director, Centre for the Study of Religion, 1992-2003. Areas of research: comparative history of modern Christianity, modern European social and religious history, historiography. Recent publications: “Changing Religious Establishments and Religious Liberty in France, Part 1, 1787-1789” (1997); “Changing Religious Establishments and Religious Liberty in France, Part 2, 1879-1908” (1997); The Parish and Cathedral of St. James, Toronto, 1797-1997 (co-author, Toronto 1997, winner of the Kilbourn Award, 2000); “Secularization, Secular Religions, and Religious Pluralism in European and North American Societies” (1999); “Anglican Theological Education in Ontario: a Historical Perspective” (co-author, 2000); “Rome 2000” (2000); “From Church and State to Religions as Public Life in Modern Europe” (2002); “Christianity Fever in Contemporary China” (2002), “Hegemony and the Historiography of Universities: the Toronto Case” (2003); Herbert Butterfield: Historian as Dissenter (2004); “Transcending Dichotomies in History and Religion” (2006); “How Religious Studies Misunderstands Religion” (2007); “Historical Study of Religion” (2008); “Protestants of Canada” (2008); “The Formation of the United Church of Canada” (2008). Contact: Victoria College, Northrop Frye Building, Rm.323, 73 Queen’s Park Crescent East, Toronto ON M5S 1K7 (416) 585-4442
Email: ct.mcintire@utoronto.ca
E. Pontoriero
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
Peter Richardson
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
Sarah Rollens
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
Kunga Sherab
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
Nicholas Schonhoffer
Nicholas completed a BSc (Mathematics) and BA (Religious Studies) at the University of Regina, before completing an MA from the University of Toronto. He is currently in the third year of a PhD. His research interests include Christian Origins, Gnosticism, Post-Colonialism, and Method and Theory in the Study of Religion.
Eric Steinschneider
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
Erin Vearncombe
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
Ben Wood
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