2025 Undergraduate Conference: Underrepresented Topics in the Study of Religion

One of the most culturally rich cities in the world, Toronto is home to an active Sikh community, a community that struggles to reconcile its cultural and religious traditions with evolving societal views on sexuality. This presentation examined the challenges faced by young Sikhs as they navigate the tension between the expectations of their faith, their family's cultural values, and their own sexuality. as well as religion's role in conflict and the ways scripture can affect LGBTQ+ Sikhs.

Focused on understanding the role Muslim shrines, known as kramats or mazaars, plays in creating community in modern-day South Africa. Kramats are a type of shrine to Muslim holy men, known as Auliyah, who were mainly early importers of Islam to the Cape. Today, kramats are a subject of debate amongst the now highly diverse South African Muslim community. The presentation examined the relationships between South African Muslims and the kramats through the lenses of relationships of authority, relationships with textual traditions, relationships with oral tradition, and material religion. 

Between 1933 and 1945, approximately 2,000 European Jews sought refuge in Albania due to Nazi and Fascist persecution. Despite the occupation of Albania—first by Fascist Italy, and later by Nazi Germany—Albanian tribal laws pertaining to the unconditional hospitality of guests in danger were strongly upheld in local communities. Focusing primarily on the historical altruism shown by Christian and Muslim Albanians providing hospitality to Jewish refugees, this presentation drew on the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and Immanuel Kant to provide a new reading of hospitality in the Albanian context during World War II.

With the growing influence of anti-conversion laws in India and Pakistan, which restrict interfaith marriage in the name of protecting religious integrity, diaspora communities face escalating challenges regarding faith, belonging, and cultural authenticity. Through case studies of Hindu-Muslim and Sikh-Christian marriages, this presentation examind how these distant legal and social norms impact family attitudes and shape religious institutions' responses to interfaith unions.

A comparison between the Satanic Temple (TST) and the Order of the Nine Angles, and how each Satanic group positions themselves against Liberalism and Christianity. Exploring what satanism means, and how a “satanist” might pose themselves in relation to the world they live in, this exploration examined the relationship between TST and the American “Religious Right” and what this indicates about the beliefs of TST – and how we can consider TST in the American political context as a result. 

While atheism is typically associated with progressivism, a subset of atheists—mostly anti-theists—have embraced right-wing extremism (RWE). Identity formation theories suggest that this phenomenon may be due to an ideological vacuum left by a former religious identity to be filled by RWE. Using large language model qualitative analysis and interviews with atheist creators, this research identifies thematic differences in online user comments; Atheist YouTube emphasizes dialogue and healing while r/Atheism promotes outgroup derogation. These differences align with social identity theory, which suggests that group dynamics and platform design can influence RWE expression.

Complex political dynamics play out between Pagan groups and heritage management bodies at the UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS) of Stonehenge and Avebury. These megalithic sites play host to many competing discourses, including intra-Pagan disputes on their sacred qualities and universal significance. Recent cases of right-wing ethno-nationalist ‘Folkish’ Pagan groups attempting to use megalithic sites for their own ritual purposes have been met with resistance from both ‘Universalist’ Pagan organizations and heritage management bodies, who perceive ‘Folkish’ presence as a threat to the WHS. The two Pagan groups hold fundamentally oppositional conceptions of sacred space that limit the capacity for coexistence at the WHS; ‘Universalist’ Pagan groups oppose the presence of ‘Folkish’ groups as they threaten the natural and built environment, seek to limit shared access to sites, and pose a risk to future Pagan engagements, all behaviours which disrupt the qualities making the WHS sacred to ‘Universalist’ Pagans.

The vilification of herbal abortions performed by female spiritual healers and midwives in early modern Europe by actors within the Catholic Church was pivotal in stigmatizing female reproductive autonomy and suppressing female healthcare knowledge. This characterization of herbalism as witchcraft was part of a broader structural shift, politicizing female anatomy by centralizing medical information as a means of Catholic patriarchal control, whose legacy persists in modern medicine and reproductive health discourse today. Religious entanglement in political structures remains evident within debates about reproductive care policy and in the lack of medical research surrounding the female reproductive system.

In the biblical disability studies field we see analysis of the narrative function of a disability within its wider biblical context, alongside a second approach that considers the experience of a biblical character with a disability. This presentation argues that just as we might hypothesize the experience of revelation or exile, we must hypothesize the experience of disability – not only because it enhances biblical narratives, but because it sees disability as a conceptual category of personal and social experience in the biblical period, as well as the ways these relate to or diverge from our current cultural norms. 

This study examines how Ismaili Muslims engaged in philanthropy encounter and interpret interfaith influences, including ideas and practices associated with other traditions, and how these encounters shape their broader perspectives on religious and social engagement. By centering lived experiences rather than assuming a particular interfaith framework, this research highlights the complexity of interreligious engagement and philanthropy in a multicultural setting. 

Veiling, or the use of head and/or face coverings, is part of many Muslim women’s’ practice of the Islamic principle of hijab, or the practice of modesty. Through interview and observation-based ethnographic research, this paper explored the ways in which socio-cultural formations around the performance of hijab impact belief in and practices of hijab among members of the South Asian Shi’a Ithna Ash’ari Muslim diaspora living in and around Toronto.

Toronto’s multicultural landscape serves as a dynamic setting for exploring the intersection of Islamic ethics and entrepreneurship. Through a semi-structured interview, this research investigates how Islamic principles, community networks, and moral considerations shape entrepreneurial decision-making in a competitive market, particularly concerning the ethical implications of interest-based transactions (riba). 

The Quran, the sacred text of Islam, is regarded as the divine kalam (word) of Allah. Muslims are encouraged to maintain a relationship with the Quran as mentioned in various verses. This reverence for the Quran is further upheld through the tradition of Hifz – a sacred process in which an individual dedicates themselves to memorizing the entire Quran by heart. But what does Hifz truly look like in practice? This research seeks to understand how a young Hafiz (a person who has memorized the Quran) attending university in Toronto navigates their relationship with the Quran in daily life. 

Using conceptual frameworks derived from the fields of medical anthropology and the anthropology of religion, this interview-based ethnographic project investigates how a Toronto Muslim woman suffering from osteoarthritis, a debilitating chronic illness that causes joint pain, navigates the five prayers Muslims are obligated to perform daily with respect to the limitations imposed by her condition.