Working Group Archives

Bridging Disciplines in Manuscript Studies

The study of manuscript material connects researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines; yet opportunities for professional exchange are often missed due to institutional divides. Since 2018, the “Bridging Disciplines in Manuscript Studies” group has addressed this need by creating interdisciplinary dialogue and a platform for collaborative research to further raise scholarly awareness of manuscript collections in the Greater Toronto Area and provide opportunities for practical training in manuscript studies.

In the 2021-2022 year, we will continue to create new content that connects researchers from different fields and showcases the manuscript-related work being done in Toronto. We will strengthen our ties to librarians and curators from institutions across the GTA through in-person or digital field trips that will bring our members in close contact with local material, highlight the strengths of our collections and facilitate research on neglected or lesser-known artifacts in Toronto. We will organize hands-on workshops to train key skills required in the study of manuscripts and add to our theoretical understanding of the manuscript as an artifact of material culture through practical experience on such topics as palaeography, codicology, transcription, and practical aspects of manuscript production such as letter design, calligraphy, or bookbinding.

Leads

• Adam Cohen, Art History
• Florian Mueller, Ph.D. candidate, FAS Germanic Languages and Literatures

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Sébastien Drouin, UTSC Language Studies
• Judith Newman, Study of Religion and Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Cillian O'Hogan, Medieval Studies
• Enrico Raffaelli, UTM Historical Studies
• Shafique Virani, UTM Historical Studies
• Shannon Wearing, Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Tom Cohen, History, York University
• Jonathan Loft, Toronto School of Theology

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

• Gregory Fewster, Classics

Professional Staff and Librarians, University of Toronto

• Lale Javanshir, University of Toronto Libraries
• Natalie Oeltjen, Centre for Reformation & Renaissance Studies
• Tim Perry, Thomas Fisher Library

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Justin Arnwine, Medieval Studies
• Kathryn Geddes, Study of Religion
• Annie Heckman, Study of Religion
• Sophie Jordan, Germanic Languages & Literatures
• Shirley Kinney, Medieval Studies
• Nora Thorburn, Medieval Studies
• Xin Yue (Sylvia) Wang, Art History

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Sarah Wilk, Humanities, York University

Jesuit History Research Group

The Jesuit History Research Group (JHRG) endeavours to establish the University of Toronto as a local interdisciplinary hub for the thriving field of Jesuit studies. The pandemic motivates us to reach out regionally, nationally, and internationally to establish ourselves as an emerging entity in the field of Jesuit studies—one of only three with an online presence. For now, it also makes in person initiatives impossible.  What makes us unique is our local focus and the various formulas we use to facilitate intellectual exchanges. We offer relatively informal round tables, talks with respondents, moderated “conversations” and, circumstances allowing, workshops, film screenings, and field trips.

Leads

• Andreas Motsch, French
• Jean-Olivier Richard, SMC Christianity & Culture
• Fr. Thomas Worcester, S.J., Regis College

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Michael C.F. Bazzocchi, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
• Paul Cohen, History
• Mairi Cowan, UTM Historical Studies
• Sébastien Drouin, UTSC French & Linguistics
• Sr. Gill Goulding CJ, Regis College
• Francesco Guardiani, Italian Studies
• Grégoire Holtz, French
• Reid Locklin, SMC Christianity & Culture/Study of Religion
• Valentina Napolitano, Anthropology
• Adam Richter, UTM Chemical & Physical Sciences
• David W. Smith, French (Emeritus)
• Stephen Tardif, SMC Christianity & Culture

Faculty Members outside University of Toronto

• Luca Codignola-Bo, History, St. Mary's University
• Clorinda Donato, French and Italian, California State University
• Daniel MacLeod, History, University of Manitoba
• Carlota McAllister, Anthropology, York University
• Fr. John Meehan SJ, History, Sudbury University
• Robert Melançon, French, University of Montreal (Emeritus)
• Swann Paradis, French, York University
• Marie-Christine Pioffet, French, York University
• John Steckley, Liberal Arts, Humber College (Emeritus)

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Oana Baboi, History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
• Petre Ene, Spanish & Portuguese
• Adam Lalonde SJ, Regis College
• Adam Richter, History & Philosophy of Science and Technology
• Nadia Takhtaganova, Linguistics

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Fannie Dionne, History, McGill University
• Sandra-Lynn Leclaire, History McGill University

Undergraduate Students at University of Toronto

• Isadora Ateljevic
• Miaochun Chen
• Marco Istasy
• Arjun Thapar
• Isaure Vorstman

Community Professionals

• Bill Byrd, Rainbow Faith & Freedom Charity
• Fr. Michael Knox SJ, Martyrs’ Shrine, Midland
• Fr. Sylvester Tan SJ, Jesuits Montreal

Manufacture of Consensus: A Critical Examination of Government Approach to COVID-19 Recommendations

This working group will examine the extent to which the scientific consensus that is implicit in orders and recommendations from Health Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic satisfies the knowledge-based model of consensus and, indeed, how this consensus should be characterized. The working group will critically examine other non-cognitive explanations for this consensus, drawing on studies of social scientists, which indicate that members of a group can deliberately form a consensus despite their awareness that the consensual view falls short of knowledge; indeed, that people are likely to form the consensus whether the consensual view is true or not. The working group will also consider various explanations why consensus may fall short of the conditions for knowledge-based consensus.

Lead

• Brian Baigrie, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology

Members

Faculty Members at the University of Toronto

• Joe Berkovitz, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
• Brian Feldman, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pediatric Health
• Cory Lewis, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
• Ross Upshur, Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty Members outside the University of Toronto

• Mat Mercuri, Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, McMaster University

Graduate Students at the University of Toronto

• Austin Due, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
• Rachel Katz, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
• Aaron Kenna, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology

Undergraduate Students at the University of Toronto

• Eric Emmenegger, Chemistry
• Lucy Perillat, Molecular Genetics

The Politics of Labour

Labour issues have risen to the forefront of both academic and popular discourse. Ongoing workers’ strikes among meat-plant workers, Amazon employees, graduate students, and teachers, alongside the often immensely anti-union efforts on the part of universities and corporations, have demonstrated a revived interest in labour issues and their radical suppression and denial. Essentially interdisciplinary, concerns with labour coalesce issues of political science and political economy, literature, technology, history, environment, and philosophy, to name a few. Addressing these issues demands that scholars think collaboratively through critical discourse on labour both within its historic and present contexts. This group will provide a forum in which to do so.

Leads

• Emily Halliwell-Macdonald, Ph.D. candidate, English
• Emily Nacol, UTM Political Science

Members

Faculty Members at the University of Toronto

• Nicole Cohen, Faculty of Information
• Daniel Guadagnolo, UTM Communication, Culture, Information & Technology
• Thomas A. Laughlin, lecturer, UTM English & Drama
• Christopher Petrakos, UTM Historical Studies

Faculty Member outside University of Toronto

• Igor Shoikhedbrod, Political Science and Lawy, Justice & Society, Dalhousie University

Graduate Students at the University of Toronto

• Jasmine Chorley-Foster, Political Science
• Rosalind Cooper, Study of Religion
• Alexandra Martin, Political Science

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Phil Henderson, Political Science, University of Victoria

Undergraduate Students at the University of Toronto

• Alexander Lynch

Practising Dialogue

This group will focus on the diminishing capacity for true dialogue; our failure to simultaneously dissent and respect boundaries. As members of a multilingual and multi-ethnic society, we are aware of the impact of divisiveness and the ambiguous nature of calls for greater good, which can degrade into a call-out culture, silencing valid stances in the name of other greater goods. Our goal is to develop strategies that overcome the tendency to retreat into small groups of the like-minded: a capacity for dialogue, which involves recognizing and meeting people whose backgrounds and viewpoints differ along all possible dimensions (e.g., age, gender, political and religious affiliations, educational background, language) in a space created by the force of respectful listening and a desire for mutual learning.

Leads

• Laura Colantoni, Spanish & Portuguese
• Ana-Teresa Pérez-Leroux, Linguistics and Spanish & Portuguese

Members

Faculty Members at the University of Toronto

• Victor Rivas, Spanish & Portuguese and Latin American Studies program
• Jeffrey Senese, UTM Philosophy
• Jeffrey Steele, UTM Language Studies

Faculty Member outside the University of Toronto

• Ailén Cruz, Spanish, Australia National University

Staff Member, University of Toronto

• Caroline Rabbat, Director of Critical Incidents, Safety and Health Awareness

Graduate Students at the University of Toronto

• Nae Hanashiro, Spanish & Portuguese
• Sam Jambrovic, Spanish & Portuguese
• Alejandro Suarez, Philosophy

Community Professionals

• Bill Forrest, Affordable Housing East Non-Profit Housing Corporation
• Maria Hadziz, National Volunteer Coordinator, Prison Fellowship Canada
• Ana Luz Huete, consultant, cultural transformation of organizations & leadership
• Rodney John, mediator
• Gillian McConnell, psychotherapist
• Eliza Trotter, Archdiocese of Toronto
• Arturo Saez Sands, Director, Saez Law Firm, Madrid
• Arantxa Zararain, Director, Food Services, Zubarin College, Madrid
• Maria José Zatarain, Strategic Income Security Services

Public Writing in the Humanities

This working group builds on the JHI-funded “The Toronto Humanities at Large Writing Workshop,” which took place in March 2021. Since then, ongoing conversations among workshop participants have focused on the need for building a supportive and critical interdisciplinary space for humanities scholars at various stages of their careers to write, read, and learn together about public writing. The COVID-19 pandemic has also added a sense of urgency for the creation of such a group as it has highlighted the ongoing need for supportive writing communities, the alienation inherent in the precarity of academic work, and the importance of clear and efficient communication with the public from experts in a variety of fields. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of academics with a shared interest in experimenting with different modes of writing, this working group will offer a unique opportunity for scholars to focus on communicating with a variety of audiences. The group will focus on the craft and processes of public writing, from pitching to working with non-academic editors to editing advanced pieces. In order to support members in building their public writing practice, this working group will host regular writing sessions, focussed skills-based workshops, reading groups, and opportunities to workshop public writing at regular intervals.

Lead

• Christy Anderson, Art History

Members

Faculty Members at the University of Toronto

• Jason Nguyen, John M. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
• Dragana Obradovic, Slavic Languages & Literatures
• Yulia Ryzhik, UTSC English

Postdoctoral Researchers outside the University of Toronto

• Emily Doucet, Art History and Communications, McGill University
• Jessica Mace, Canada Construction Project (LEAF)
• Danielle Taschereau-Mamers, English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

Graduate Students at the University of Toronto

• Brigidda Bell, Study of Religion
• Deanna del Vecchio, OISE Social Justice Education

Community Professional

• Camille Bégin, Public Historian, Heritage Toronto

Rethinking Policing, Penality and Pandemic

This working group brings together established, junior and emerging scholars across disciplines to examine and discuss policing and penality in relation to racialized, poor and street-involved populations in Toronto. We are a diverse, multilingual group of faculty and students whose combined areas of research include Afro-Latin American Studies, anticolonial studies, Black Studies, criminology, critical geography, critical race feminisms, disability studies, emancipatory pedagogies, equity and solidarity, and public health.

As social justice researchers, we share a sense of accountability to communities in and around our universities, and particularly a responsibility for the well-being of those populations who are marginalized and excluded through inequitable social relations and structures and who are targeted by state violence. These obligations are all the more pressing in the context of the COVID pandemic, which has foregrounded how policing in its many forms disproportionately endangers the lives of Black, Indigenous, migrant, queer, racialized, trans, and other marginalized folks.

This working group will study current debates in academia addressing:

1. Community-university relations and the role of the university in today’s society following the outbreak of the pandemic;
2. Notions of “safety” on and around university campuses, particularly for those who are racialized, Indigenous, and disabled; and
3. Tensions between and implications of contemporary discourses of public health, public safety, and decolonization.

This working group aims to bring together scholars and community members in the spirit of study that aims beyond critique and towards cultivating alternatives to carcerality.

In 2021-2022 we will be exploring the themes of Food Security and Land Use. We wish to expand our work to include more opportunities to grow our relationships with community groups, and to engage more directly in community work.

Leads

• rosalind hampton, OISE Social Justice Education
• Vannina Sztainbok, OISE Social Justice Education

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Stan Doyle-Wood, New College Equity Studies program and Transitional Year Program
• Sam Tecle, New College Equity Studies program

 Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Rai Reese, Criminology, Ryerson University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Andrea Roman Alfaro, Sociology
• A.J. Bedward, OISE Social Justice Education
• Elaine Cagulota, OISE Social Justice Education
• Mariba Douglas, Geography & Planning
• Roxana Escobar Ñañez, Geography & Planning
• Ntombi Nkiwane, Della Lana School of Public Health, Health Promotion

Tamil Studies: A Discipline in Motion

This working group links a growing community of scholars and students from the University of Toronto and the broader GTA area to critically inquire into the histories and the present manifestations of Tamil studies, both as an international scholarly discipline and one rooted locally in Toronto. Tamil is a language, but it is also a social and political identity that has shifted across time and place. Therefore, its study spans the humanities and the social and political sciences, with varied trajectories in South and Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and the diaspora. The specific institutions, motivations, and intellectual histories that have fostered Tamil studies over the years deserve further reflection. As such, we assemble a diverse group of scholars from the humanities and social sciences, who research ancient as well as modern Tamil sources and phenomena from a number of disciplines, methods, and media, in order to understand more fully the modes by which Tamil has been understood across time and place. While we look forward to returning to physically convening, it has become clear that a flexible, multi-media manner of conducting meetings will expand our accessibility to our working group members.

In the coming year, we will discuss Transregional Tamiḻ in Conversation. By this, we intend to consider our subfield in its manifold relations; Tamiḻ in the context of South India and Sri Lanka, Tamiḻ in the context of the Indian Ocean studies, and Tamiḻ Diaspora. Recognizing that Tamiḻ studies is the most dominant of linguistically-defined subfields of South India, we seek to expand by inviting University of Toronto graduate students of multiple departments whose work involves languages and regions of South India, Sri Lanka, and those whose work relates by the Indian Ocean connection. Our working group integrates faculty and graduate students from all three campuses and builds collaborative links with the Asian Institute and the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Munk School, the collaborative graduate program in Book History and Print Culture, and the Tamil Worlds Initiative at UTSC. We also hope to encourage collaboration amongst the community of scholars engaged in Tamil studies in the broader GTA area.

Leads

• Mark Balmforth, postdoctoral researcher, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Stephanie Duclos-King, Study of Religion
• Jesse Pruitt, Ph.D. cand., Study of Religion
• Bhavani Raman, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Srilata Raman, Study of Religion
• Kristina Rogahn, Ph.D. student, Study of Religion

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Francis Cody, UTM Anthropology
• Christoph Emmrich, UTM Historical Studies and Study of Religion
• Malavika Kasturi, UTM Historical Studies

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Vaisugi Kailasam, Southeast Asian Studies, University of California-Berkeley
• Shobhana Xavier, School of Religion, Queen’s University

Librarian, University of Toronto

• Natkeeran Kedchumykanthan, UTSC Library Digital Scholarship Unit

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Henria Aton, Faculty of Information
• Shibi Laxman, History
• Janani Mandayam, Study of Religion
• Ganga Rudraiah, Cinema Studies
• Siddharth Sridhar, History
• Mirela Stosic, Study of Religion

Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North

This working group brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on Indigenous, environmental, and settler pasts, presents and futures around the Circumpolar North to examine the complex visual/textual cultures of this region. We will work toward understandings of 'visual culture' as what Agamben calls the "life of images" at the crossroads of multiple discourses. The group encompasses the extensive research interests of our members, notably northern landscapes, borders and environmental history, nineteenth-century settler-colonial expeditionary narratives, contemporary and historic militarization and defense, and Indigenous arts, modernisms, and cultural heritage across Canada and the wider circumpolar North. We will confront north-south dialogues and divides, drawing attention to cultural social and environmental dynamics between Indigenous communities and settler populations across Alaska, Canada, Greenland, the Nordic countries and Russia, offering a collaborative and interdisciplinary forum to consider these historic and contemporary environments and communities.

Leads

• Mark Cheetham, Art History
• Isabelle Gapp, Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History
• Ivana Dizdar, Ph.D. student, Art History

Members

Faculty Members at the University of Toronto

• Matthew Farish, Geography & Planning
• Melissa Gniadek, UTM English & Drama
• Alexandra Rahr, Centre for the Study of the United States
• Alison Smith, History
• Rebecca Woods, History
• Adrian Zakar, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and History & Philosophy of Science & Technology

Faculty Members outside the University of Toronto

• Amanda Boetzkes, Art History and Theatre, University of Guelph
• Gerald McMaster, Indigenous Visual Cuture, OCAD University
• Allison Morehead, Art History, Queen's University

Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Toronto

• Jonathan Luedee, History

Postdoctoral Researcher outside the University of Toronto

• Carmen Victor, Cinema and Media Arts, York University

Graduate Students at the University of Toronto

• Judith Ellen Brunton, Study of Religion
• Ivana Dizdar, Art History

Graduate Students outside the University of Toronto

• Margaryta Golovchenko, Art History, University of Oregon

Professional Staff, University of Toronto

• Hana Nikčević, Public Programming and Outreach Assistant, University of Toronto Art Museum

Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) Solidarities: Honouring BIOPOC Women, Feminisms, and LGBTQ2IA+ Communities

What does it mean to bring academic theorizations, concrete grassroots organizing, and community-building into active, lasting relationships in meaningful, material ways? What brings BIPOC communities together, but what is currently holding us apart? What principles should we uphold as we aim to work in solidarity? The BIPOC Solidarities working group is open to anyone interested in respectfully and collectively working towards dismantling colonialism. The working group will provide a space for members to develop research goals, enhance their scholarship, and further bridge the relationship between academia and community organizing. We will meet once a month from September 2020 to April 2021 to engage with readings, films, theories, and scholarship emerging from diverse disciplines, a wide array of grassroots organizations, and from community-based voices and perspectives. To develop our skills as scholars and organizers, each member of the working group will have opportunities to select literatures to ground our monthly discussions, facilitate monthly meetings, share research in progress, and organize events and excursions that guide the field of BIPOC solidarities.

Leads

• Sewsen Igbu, Ph.D. student, OISE Adult Education & Community Development
• Lance McCready, OISE Adult Education & Community Developmemnt
• Ashley Caranto Morford, Ph.D. candidate, FAS English and Book History
• Shana Peltier, Ph.D. student, OISE School & Clinical Psychology
• Kaitlin Rizarri, M.A. student, OISE Social Justice Education

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Jeffrey Ansloos, OISE Applied Psychology & Human Development
• Jennifer Brant, OISE Curriculum, Teaching & Learning
• Jill Carter, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Maria Hupfield, UTM Visual Studies and UTM English & Drama
• Anna Thomas, UTM English & Drama

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Conely de Leon, Sociology, Ryerson University
• Eugenia Zuroski, English & Cultural Studies, McMaster University

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

• Erin Soros, SSHRC postdoctoral fellow

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Corinn Gerber, Comparative Literature
• Arun Jacob, Faculty of Information
• Rozanne Korpan, Study of Religion
• Alexandra Sarra-Davis, English

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Monica Batac, Social Work, McGill University 
• Bridging Disciplines in Manuscript Studies (returning)

Bridging Disciplines in Manuscript Studies

The study of manuscript material connects researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines; yet opportunities for professional exchange are often missed due to institutional divides. Since 2018, the “Bridging Disciplines in Manuscript Studies” group has addressed this need by creating interdisciplinary dialogue and a platform for collaborative research to further raise scholarly awareness of manuscript collections in the Greater Toronto Area and provide opportunities for practical training in manuscript studies. In the 2021-2022 year, we will continue to create new content that connects researchers from different fields and showcases the manuscript-related work being done in Toronto. We will strengthen our ties to librarians and curators from institutions across the GTA through in-person or digital field trips that will bring our members in close contact with local material, highlight the strengths of our collections and facilitate research on neglected or lesser-known artifacts in Toronto. We will organize hands-on workshops to train key skills required in the study of manuscripts and add to our theoretical understanding of the manuscript as an artifact of material culture through practical experience on such topics as palaeography, codicology, transcription, and practical aspects of manuscript production such as letter design, calligraphy, or bookbinding.

Leads

• Adam Cohen, FAS Art History
• Florian Mueller, Ph.D. candidate, FAS Germanic Languages and Literatures

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Sébastien Drouin, UTSC Language Studies
• Judith Newman, FAS Study of Religion and Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Cillian O'Hogan, FAS Medieval Studies
• Enrico Raffaelli, UTM Historical Studies
• Shafique Virani, UTM Historical Studies
• Shannon Wearing, Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Tom Cohen, History, York University
• Jonathan Loft, Toronto School of Theology

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

• Gregory Fewster, FAS Classics

Professional Staff and Librarians, University of Toronto

• Lale Javanshir, University of Toronto Libraries
• Natalie Oeltjen, Centre for Reformation & Renaissance Studies
• Tim Perry, Thomas Fisher Library

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Justin Arnwine, Medieval Studies
• Kathryn Geddes, Study of Religion
• Annie Heckman, Study of Religion
• Sophie Jordan, Germanic Languages & Literatures
• Shirley Kinney, Medieval Studies
• Nora Thorburn, Medieval Studies
• Xin Yue (Sylvia) Wang, Art History

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Sarah Wilk, Humanities, York University

Building Environmental Humanities at the University of Toronto

The Environmental Humanities Network was conceived to address the absence of environmental humanities (EH) at the University of Toronto by establishing a network of EH scholars - faculty and graduate students from various campuses – and creating an institutional home for this vital field of inquiry. In this third year, we will continue to host EH events, build strategic partnerships, expand our network of scholars and students, develop our collective vision for a long-term institutional home. In the midst of a global pandemic – an explicitly environmental crisis – the University of Toronto’s EH work is more important than ever. The environmental humanities, both as a field of research and as an approach to world-building, drives essential research and teaching on the social, moral, and emotional dimensions of a post-pandemic recovery. Our events in the coming year will imagine ways of building biotic coalitions across and between species, both during and after the pandemic.

Leads

• Grace King, M.E.S. student, School of the Environment
• Andrea Most, FAS English
• Alexandra Rahr, Centre for the Study of the United States

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Alan Ackerman, FAS English
• Tania Aguila-Way, FAS English
• Alan Bewell, FAS English
• Mark Cheetham, FAS Art History
• Michael Ekers, UTSC Human Geography
• Matt Farish, FAS Geography & Planning
• Melissa Gniadek, UTM English & Drama
• Kajri Jain, UTM Visual Studies
• Sherry Lee, Faculty of Music
• Fikile Nxumalo, OISE Curriculum, Teaching & Learning
• Stanka Radovic, UTM English & Drama
• John Robinson, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
• Stephen Scharper, UTM Anthropology
• Avery Slater, UTM English & Drama
• Stefan Soldovieri, FAS German
• Tanhum Yoreh, School of Environment

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Judith Brunton, Study of Religion
• Derek Dunlop, Art History
• Olivia Pellegrino, English
• Michaela Rife, Art History

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Aftab Mirzaei, Science & Technology Studies, York University
• Justyna Poray-Wybranowska, English, York University
• Colin Sutherland, Geography, York University

Undergraduate Student, University of Toronto

• Aisha Assan-Lebbe, FAS Geography

Community Professional

• Henry Ivry, journalist 

Class Struggle Revisited: Theory, Method, Praxis

The social relation of class struggle provides a framework for understanding and retheorizing the chaotic yet organized conditions of global accumulation, displacement, and dispossession. The capitalist social formation, with the bourgeoisie as its dominant class, is a constellation of social forces, relations, and forms of consciousness that privatize profit from socialized production. At the very same time, the bourgeoisie as a global social class is internally divided and rivalrous, embedding a chaotic competition within the capitalist drive to maximize profit. Under such conditions the majority of people generate wealth for and are subjugated by a very select minority of people. Although class formation determines the exploitation of working people, class struggle, as a social relation, encompasses myriad processes and practices of ideological repression, which include, without being limited to, hetero-patriarchy, racialization, illegalized migration, Indigenous erasure, nationalism, and white supremacy. In essence an analysis of class struggle is about putting rigorous scholarship in service of emancipatory politics. By revisiting the theory, method, and praxis of class struggle we will bring seminal works into conversation with emergent social struggles and analyses. The working group will meet for eight sessions and will be facilitated by authors and/or faculty members. Each meeting will include a lecture for the first half of the session, which will be recorded and made available publicly.

For inquiries, and to register to participate, please contact: class.struggleworkinggroup@gmail.com

Leads

• Wesal Abu-Qudum, Ph.D. student, OISE Leadership Adult & Higher Education
• Shirin Haghgou, Ph.D. student, OISE Leadership Adult & Higher Education
• Shahrzad Mojab, FAS Women & Gender Studies and OISE Leadership Higher & Adult Education
• Genevieve Ritchie, Ph.D. candidate, OISE Adult Education & Community Development

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Chandna Desai, New College Equity Studies program
• Kanishka Goonewardena, FAS Geography & Planning
• Jamie Magnusson, OISE Leadership Higher &Adult Education
• Jesook Song, FAS Anthropology

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Sarah Carpenter, Education, University of Alberta

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Nicholas Abrams, Anthropology
• Terran Giacomini, OISE Adult Education & Community Development
• Tara Silver, OISE Adult Education & Community Development
• Ian Liujia Tian, Women & Gender Studies

Contacts with Greek Culture in the Middle Ages

The loss of the knowledge of Greek in Late Antiquity and its re-appropriation in the Renaissance is a commonplace in the periodization of Western European history. Greek culture came to Western Europe via the Roman classics, via late antique translations of biblical, theological, and Aristotelian writings, or via Arabic intermediaries, but supposedly could not be accessed directly, due to a lack of linguistic competency. This remains a popular perception despite the fact that it has long been challenged in various ways. Greek words transited to Western languages via late Vulgar Latin and Church Latin. Several Greek-speaking regions were under Western rule for longer or shorter time periods: southern Italy and Sicily, Cyprus, even Byzantium itself after the 4th Crusade. We know about Greek-Latin contacts in Montecassino and about the use of Greek in Norman administration, about translations written for the court of Frederick II and those by William of Moerbeke, as well as the early attempts at translating Homer; we are aware of saints’ legends traveling from the East to the West and of French romances being translated into Greek.

However, much remains to be understood:

• How much Greek did crusaders, diplomats, and merchants learn?
• How much truth lies behind the claims of some vernacular poets to have used Greek sources?
• How much exchange was there at a popular level?

Medieval Constantinople was a meeting point for East and West for over a millennium: interactions with Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Slavic, and other traditions are essential not only as a means for the transmission of knowledge from Central Asia to Europe (and vice-versa) but also for making sense of the remarkably rich and diverse literature, art, and culture that emerges from the ever-smaller territory actually controlled by Byzantium. Within Byzantine studies, there is increasing interest in questions of Byzantine self-presentation and how Byzantium was perceived by others.

The aim of this discussion group is twofold:

1. We will familiarize ourselves with existing work and with the problems attached to the questions outlined above, in order to lay the groundwork for a future interdisciplinary and international project.
2. We will raise awareness of, and interest in, the role of Byzantium between late antiquity and early modernity, hoping to offer some compensation for an obvious lacuna in the premodern hub that is the University of Toronto.

Lead

• Dorothea Kullmann, FAS French and Medieval Studies

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Peter Bing, FAS Classics
• Regina Höschele, FAS Classics
• Jeannie Miller, FAS Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Cillian O’Hogan, FAS Medieval Studies
• Martin Revermann, UTM Historical Studies
• Jill Ross, FAS Comparative Literature and Medieval Studies

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

• Flávia Vasconcellos Amaral, FAS Classics

Professional Staff, University of Toronto

• Timothy Perry, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
• Linda Safran, Research Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Alessia Berardi, Medieval Studies
• Vittorio Bottini, Classics
• Deanna Brook’s, Medieval Studies
• Sean Karnani-Stewart, Medieval Studies
• Daniela Maldonado, Spanish & Portuguese
• Mary Maschio, Medieval Studies, Administrative Manager for this group
• Reagan Patrick, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations

Jesuit History Research Group

The Jesuit History Research Group (JHRG) endeavours to establish the University of Toronto as a local interdisciplinary hub for the thriving field of Jesuit studies. The pandemic motivates us to reach out regionally, nationally, and internationally to establish ourselves as an emerging entity in the field of Jesuit studies — one of only three with an online presence. For now, it also makes in person initiatives impossible.  What makes us unique is our local focus and the various formulas we use to facilitate intellectual exchanges. We offer relatively informal round tables, talks with respondents, moderated “conversations”  and, circumstances allowing, workshops, film screenings, and field trips.

Leads

• Andreas Motsch, FAS French
• Jean-Olivier Richard, SMC Christianity & Culture
• Fr. Thomas Worcester, S.J., Regis College

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Michael C.F. Bazzocchi, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
• Paul Cohen, FAS History
• Mairi Cowan, UTM Historical Studies
• Sébastien Drouin, UTSC French & Linguistics
• Sr. Gill Goulding CJ, Regis College
• Francesco Guardiani, FAS Italian Studies
• Grégoire Holtz, FAS French
• Reid Locklin, SMC Christianity & Culture/FAS Study of Religion
• Valentina Napolitano, FAS Anthropology
• Adam Richter, UTM Chemical & Physical Sciences
• David W. Smith, FAS French (Emeritus)
• Stephen Tardif, SMC Christianity & Culture

Faculty Members outside University of Toronto

• Luca Codignola-Bo, History, St. Mary's University
• Clorinda Donato, French and Italian, California State University
• Daniel MacLeod, History, University of Manitoba
• Carlota McAllister, Anthropology, York University
• Fr. John Meehan SJ, History, Sudbury University
• Robert Melançon, French, University of Montreal (Emeritus)
• Swann Paradis, French, York University
• Marie-Christine Pioffet, French, York University
• John Steckley, Liberal Arts, Humber College (Emeritus)

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Oana Baboi, History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
• Petre Ene, Spanish & Portuguese
• Adam Lalonde SJ, Regis College
• Adam Richter, History & Philosophy of Science and Technology
• Nadia Takhtaganova, Linguistics

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Fannie Dionne, History, McGill University
• Sandra-Lynn Leclaire, History McGill University

Undergraduate Students at University of Toronto

• Isadora Ateljevic
• Miaochun Chen
• Marco Istasy
• Arjun Thapar
• Isaure Vorstman

Community Professionals

• Bill Byrd, Rainbow Faith & Freedom Charity
• Fr. Michael Knox SJ, Martyrs’ Shrine, Midland
• Fr. Sylvester Tan SJ, Jesuits Montreal

Native Performance Culture and the Rhythm of (Re)-Conciliation: Re-Membering Ourselves in Deep Time

The Deep Time working group is committed to moving slowly and carefully through the processes of building relationships -- with each other, with the work that we are doing, with the communities with and for whom we do our work, with the Indigenous stewards (our treaty partners) in these territories, and with the land itself. We have come to understand that it is only through painstaking engagement with the tangled history of settlement that future conciliation might be operationalized; hence, to facilitate such conciliation in our own work, we have plunged into a series of workshops, peripatetic teachings, and artistic encounters to establish methodologies through which to devise works that will build a legacy of honest encounter and ethical, sustainable research partnerships upon which future generations might build. We continue to seek opportunities to meaningfully offer our skills, time and physical labor to support Indigenous community projects that work to strengthen Indigenous individuals.

In the coming year, the group has committed itself to three projects:

1. Co-publishing on dramaturgical creation emerging from irreconcilable spaces
2. Staging (live or via podcast) a performative intervention titled Story-ing the 94
3. Continuing our Marker-Tree Mapping Project to include mapping the trees, physical navigation of the paths set by the marker trees, and peripatetic teachings by community members.

Lead

• Jill Carter, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Paul Babiak, Instructor, Transitional Year program
• Heidi Bohaker, FAS History
• Seika Boye, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Antje Budde, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Nancy Copeland, UTM English & Drama
• Susan Hill, FAS Indigenous Studies
• Jon Johnson, Woodsworth College
• Stephen Johnson, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Pamela Klassen, FAS Study of Religion
• VK Preston, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Karyn Recollet, FASWomen & Gender Studies
• Tamara Trojanowska, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Faculty, Outside University of Toronto

• Dolleen Manning, Indigenous Education & Pedagogy, York University

University of Toronto staff

• Gabriele Simmons, Centre for Community Partnerships
• Desmond Wong, University of Toronto Libraries

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Sherry Bie, OISE Curriculum Teaching & Learning
• James Bird, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
• Paula Danckert, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Myrto Koumarianis, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Sara McDowell, Faculty of Education
• Audrey Rochette, Study of Religion
• Gabrielle Simmons, OISE Curriculum, Teaching & Learning

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Aisha Cader, Queen’s University
• Morgan Johnson, Environmental Studies, York University

Undergraduate Students, University of Toronto

• Isabelle Klassen-Marshall
• Sheila Salvador, FAS Indigenous Studies
• Tushita Sen,
• Shirka Urechko, FAS Indigenous Studies

Community Professionals

• Cayla Clarkson
• Katia Café-Febrissy
• Megan Davies
• Shishigo Giigig
• Evadne Kelly, Re-Vision Centre for Art & Social Justice
• Muriel Lopez
• Sarah McDowell
• Trina Moyan
• Natasha Naveau, videographer
• Vivian Recollet
• Natasha Rojas Cisneros
• Hallie Wells, Independent Scholar

Network Science and the Humanities

Over the past decade our methods for analysing ancient societies have been dramatically transformed by the application of ideas and methods from Social Network Analysis and network science. Studies range considerably in scope, from the quantitative analysis of large archaeological datasets, to the qualitative evaluation of complex inter-regional phenomena. One of the attractions of network approaches is this considerable range between the quantitative and the qualitative. Another  is that network methods can be relatively forgiving of open-ended datasets and of incomplete or idiosyncratic data. So when, for example, we seek to understand interaction and mobility in the ancient Mediterranean, we certainly do not know all the settlements that existed, nor all the trade routes between known and unknown settlements; and yet through various proxies we seek to piece together a partial picture. Network models seem suited to this kind of enterprise. However, the considerable success and popularity of network approaches in such studies has created a lot of diversity in the kinds of approaches that are adopted. It is clear that in borrowing from sociology on the one hand, and social physics and network science on the other, scholars are finding quite distinct pathways into network theories and methods, sometimes without much formal guidance. Collaborative efforts have mitigated the associated risks, but there is a bewildering array of routes into the subject, and a plethora of models and approaches from which to choose. The Covid-19 pandemic has put into sharp relief the choices that are made when statistical models are brought to bear on idiosyncratic data.

Our group has two main goals:

1. To create a dialogue within the University of Toronto setting between those exploring network ideas in the context of ancient societies and those working on networks in different disciplines from across the social, biological and data sciences. This will enable increased understanding of how different disciplines work with idiosyncratic data, and how models are constructed.
2. To think about network thinking as applied to ancient societies within the broader setting of humanities research. There is a lot of discussion within the university currently around how we might extend data science more effectively into humanities scholarship and teaching. One of the key intersections for data science and the humanities has been Digital Humanities (DH). Yet, DH has not seen very much uptake of network methods, although they can be powerful exploratory tools for data visualisation. We would like, therefore, to discuss the role of network approaches within the humanities more broadly, and the ways in which network science of various forms might be more fruitfully applied.

Leads

• John Kloppenborg, FAS Study of Religion
• Carl Knappett, FAS Art History

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Christian Abizaid, FAS Geography & Planning
• Gary Bader, FAS Molecular Genetics
• Katherine Blouin, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Bonnie Erickson, FAS Sociology
• David Fisman, Della Lana School of Public Health, Epidemiology
• Marie-Josée Fortin, FAS Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
• Marney Isaac, UTSC Physical & Environmental Sciences
• Peter Marbach, FAS Computer Science
• Markus Schafer, FAS Sociology
• Chris Smith, FAS Sociology
• Ashley Tuite, Della Lana School of Public Health, Epidemiology

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

• Gisli Palsson, FAS Art History

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Katerina Apokatinidis, Classics
• Paola Gheorghiade, Art History
• Elizabeth Gibbon, Anthropology
• Christina Gousolopoulos, Study of Religion
• Rebecca Runesson, Study of Religion

Planetary Resistance: Climate, Computation, and Contingency

This working group will explore the intersections of computational practices, their history, and the history of the environment in the longue durée of the modern age -- at least since the Industrial Revolution.
Our basic questions revolve around the ways that climate change is understood via computation: Contemporary understandings of climate change are predicated on a profound quantification of the environment as a means to understand, and thus to manage, its contingency. From climate modeling to ecology, our conceptual and practical engagements with the environment are profoundly mediated by computational logics. These logics, however, were not only invented with the advent of the digital computer; they dovetail with longer histories of quantification that extend into the histories of science and of capitalism. Our conceptions of the planetary, then, are predicated on a thorough datafication of the environment. In many ways, however, the stubbornly contingent material world resists or complicates smooth translation into data or binary code.

• What are the sites where irremediable and irreducible contingency arises at the planetary scale?
• How are we make sense of computation’s role itself in producing climate change both as a conceptual object and a physical process?
• How do histories of the planetary, the climate, and computation intersect?

Leads

• Scott Richmond, FAS Cinema Studies
• Avery Slater, UTM English & Drama
• Rebecca Woods, FAS History & Philosophy of Science & Technology

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Stan Doyle-Wood, New College Equity Studies program and Transitional Year Program
• Sam Tecle, New College Equity Studies program

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Rai Reese, Criminology, Ryerson University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Andrea Roman Alfaro, Sociology
• A.J. Bedward, OISE SJE
• Elaine Cagulota, OISE SJE
• Mariba Douglas, Geography & Planning
• Roxana Escobar Ñañez, Geography & Planning
• Ntombi Nkiwane, Health Promotion, Della Lana School of Public Health 

Rethinking Policing, Penality and Pandemic

This working group brings together established, junior and emerging scholars across disciplines to examine and discuss policing and penality in relation to racialized, poor and street-involved populations in Toronto. We are a diverse, multilingual group of faculty and students whose combined areas of research include Afro-Latin American Studies, anticolonial studies, Black Studies, criminology, critical geography, critical race feminisms, disability studies, emancipatory pedagogies, equity and solidarity, and public health. As social justice researchers, we share a sense of accountability to communities in and around our universities, and particularly a responsibility for the well-being of those populations who are marginalized and excluded through inequitable social relations and structures and who are targeted by state violence. These obligations are all the more pressing in the context of the COVID pandemic, which has foregrounded how policing in its many forms disproportionately endangers the lives of Black, Indigenous, migrant, queer, racialized, trans, and other marginalized folks.

This working group will study current debates in academia addressing:

1. a) community-university relations and the role of the university in today’s society following the outbreak of the pandemic;
2. b) notions of “safety” on and around university campuses, particularly for those who are racialized, Indigenous, and disabled; and
3. c) tensions between and implications of contemporary discourses of public health, public safety, and decolonization.

This working group aims to bring together scholars and community members in the spirit of study that aims beyond critique and towards cultivating alternatives to carcerality. In 2021-2022 we will be exploring the themes of Food Security and Land Use. We wish to expand our work to include more opportunities to grow our relationships with community groups, and to engage more directly in community work.

Leads

• Rosalind Hampton, OISE Social Justice Education
• Vannina Sztainbok, OISE Social Justice Education

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Stan Doyle-Wood, New College Equity Studies program and Transitional Year Program
• Sam Tecle, New College Equity Studies program

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Rai Reese, Criminology, Ryerson University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Andrea Roman Alfaro, Sociology
• A.J. Bedward, OISE Social Justice Education
• Elaine Cagulota, OISE Social Justice Education
• Mariba Douglas, FAS Geography & Planning
• Roxana Escobar Ñañez, FAS Geography & Planning
• Ntombi Nkiwane, Della Lana School of Public Health, Health Promotion

Soundscape Studies at the University of Toronto

The cultural study of sonic environments is an especially vibrant area of contemporary research at the University of Toronto, engaging faculty members and graduate students across the tri-campus in cinema studies, music, literary studies, education, architecture, and art history.

In the coming year, we will explore two questions:

1. How are sound(scape) studies maturing into a field of academic study? Some universities now  offer academic initiatives related to sound, with programs such as the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts program at Berlin’s Universität der Künste or interdisciplinary centres such as the University of Alberta’s Sound Studies Institute. We believe that the University of Toronto could be a part of this exciting movement. Last year, members not only shared scholarly and artistic research but also discussed pedagogical challenges, exchanged syllabi, and explored sound collections that are being built in the University of Toronto  libraries. We will explore medium-term ways of making this highly productive exchange sustainable, further considering the institutional status of sound studies in our environment.
2. How is the concept of media to be understood in terms of both technologies and environments? Our “Climates of Media” event in March 2020 highlighted this concept, urging the development of cross-disciplinary connections, especially with the Cinema Studies Institute and the McLuhan Centre — to enrich our ongoing interrogation of soundscapes.

Leads

• Joseph Clarke, FAS Art History
• Sherry Lee, Faculty of Music

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Mitchell Akiyama, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
• James Cahill, FAS Cinema Studies
• Marla Hlady, UTSC Arts, Culture & Media
• Lewis Kaye, UTSC Arts, Culture, Media
• Gregory Lee Newsome, Faculty of Music
• Brady Peters, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
• Lilian Radovac, UTM Communication, Culture, Information & Technology

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Cintia Christia, School of Media, Ryerson University
• Leslie Korrick, School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design, York University

Librarian, University of Toronto

• Margaret English, Art Library

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Nil Basdurak, Music
• Liora Belford, Art History
• Emily MacCallum, Music
• Sadie Menicanin, Music
• Sherry Ostapovich, OISE
• Ganga Rudraiah, Cinema Studies
• Zach Weinstein, Philosophy
• Joshua Wiebe, Cinema Studies
• Eric Woodley, Art History

Tamil Studies: A Discipline in Motion

This working group links a growing community of scholars and students from the University of Toronto and the broader GTA area to critically inquire into the histories and the present manifestations of Tamil studies, both as an international scholarly discipline and one rooted locally in Toronto. Tamil is a language, but it is also a social and political identity that has shifted across time and place. Therefore, its study spans the humanities and the social and political sciences, with varied trajectories in South and Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and the diaspora. The specific institutions, motivations, and intellectual histories that have fostered Tamil studies over the years deserve further reflection. As such, we assemble a diverse group of scholars from the humanities and social sciences, who research ancient as well as modern Tamil sources and phenomena from a number of disciplines, methods, and media, in order to understand more fully the modes by which Tamil has been understood across time and place. While we look forward to returning to physically convening, it has become clear that a flexible, multi-media manner of conducting meetings will expand our accessibility to our working group members. In the coming year, we will discuss Transregional Tamiḻ in Conversation. By this, we intend to consider our subfield in its manifold relations; Tamiḻ in the context of South India and Sri Lanka, Tamiḻ in the context of the Indian Ocean studies, and Tamiḻ Diaspora. Recognizing that Tamiḻ studies is the most dominant of linguistically-defined subfields of South India, we seek to expand by inviting University of Toronto graduate students of multiple departments whose work involves languages and regions of South India, Sri Lanka, and those whose work relates by the Indian Ocean connection. Our working group integrates faculty and graduate students from all three campuses and builds collaborative links with the Asian Institute and the Centre for South Asian Studies at the Munk School, the collaborative graduate program in Book History and Print Culture, and the Tamil Worlds Initiative at UTSC. We also hope to encourage collaboration amongst the community of scholars engaged in Tamil studies in the broader GTA area.

Leads

• Mark Balmforth, postdoctoral researcher, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Stephanie Duclos-King, FAS Study of Religion
• Jesse Pruitt, Ph.D. cand., Study of Religion
• Bhavani Raman, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Srilata Raman, FAS Study of Religion
• Kristina Rogahn, Ph.D. student, Study of Religion

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Francis Cody, UTM Anthropology
• Christoph Emmrich, UTM Historical Studies and FAS Study of Religion
• Malavika Kasturi, UTM Historical Studies

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Vaisugi Kailasam, Southeast Asian Studies, University of California-Berkeley
• Shobhana Xavier, School of Religion, Queen’s University

Librarian, University of Toronto

• Natkeeran Kedchumykanthan, UTSC Library Digital Scholarship Unit

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Henria Aton, Faculty of Information
• Shibi Laxman, History
• Janani Mandayam, Study of Religion
• Ganga Rudraiah, Cinema Studies
• Siddharth Sridhar, History
• Mirela Stosic, Study of Religion

Bridging Disciplines in Manuscript Studies

Now in its second year, Bridging Disciplines in Manuscript Studies brings researchers from across the disciplines together to consider the challenges and puzzles of manuscript-related research.  This year, we will explore collaborative questions such as comparisons of Latin and Arabic legal formulae, cultural influences on the physical structure of manuscripts, and the analysis of barriers between disciplines and scholars posed by methodology, language, and disciplinary history. Our goal is to learn how scholars of different disciplines and practices can address such topics together, bringing diverse expertise together to understand a single manuscript subject.

Leads

• Adam Cohen, FAS Art History
• Matthew Orsag, Ph.D. cand., Medieval Studies
• Nora Thorburn, Ph.D. student, Medieval Studies

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Enrico Raffaelli, UTM Historical Studies
• Natalie Rothman, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Maria E. Subtelny, FAS Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations and Study of Religion
• Misha Teramura, FAS English

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Miguel Angel Andrés-Toledo, Classical Philology & IndoEuropean Studies, University of Toledo

Professional Staff, University of Toronto

• Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Librarian, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
• Natalie Oeltjen, Centre for Reformation & Renaissance Studies
• Tim Perry, Librarian, Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Shuaib Ally, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Justin Arnwine, Medieval Studies
• Alessia Berardi, Medieval Studies
• Nicholas Fields, Study of Religion
• Rebecca Golding, Art History
• Jessica Henderson, Medieval Studies
• Lara Howerton, Medieval Studies
• Lale Javanshir, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Jared Johnson, Medieval Studies
• Esther Kim, Art History
• Shirley Kinney, Medieval Studies
• Mary Maschio, Medieval Studies
• Julia Mattison, English
• Sepideh Najmzadeh, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Kari North, History
• Jonathan Peterson, Study of Religion
• Lane Springer, Medieval Studies
• Steven Teasdale, History

Graduate Student outside University of Toronto

• Sarah Wilk, History, York University

Building Environmental Humanities at the University of Toronto

This third year of operations for the Environmental Humanities Network will be focused on amplifying a wide range of local environmental research and events. The 2019-2020 annual theme of the Jackman Humanities Institute, Strange Weather, provides a unique opportunity to build on our connections with monthly meetings designed to consolidate environmental humanities pedagogy and research. We will be working with Toronto and university-based environmental initiatives to think about urban planning, environmental disaster responses, creative pedagogical approaches (including an archive of environmental humanities syllabi), and Indigenous land-based knowledge, among other topics. Follow us on twitter:  @EnvHumUofT

Leads

• Caroline Holland, Ph.D. cand., FAS English
• Andrea Most, FAS English
• Alexandra Rahr, FAS Centre for the Study of the United States

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Alan Ackerman, FAS English
• Tania Aguila-Way, FAS English
• Alan Bewell, FAS English
• Mark Cheetham, FAS Art History
• Michael Eckers, UTSC Human Geography
• Matt Farish, FAS Geography & Planning
• Kajri Jain, UTM Visual Studies
• Sherry Lee, Faculty of Music
• Stanka Radovic, UTM English & Drama
• John Robinson, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
• Stephen Scharper, UTM Anthropology
• Tanhum Yoreh, School of the Environment

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Judith Brunton, Study of Religion
• Henry Ivry, English
• Julia Lum, Art History
• Olivia Pellegrino, English
• Michaela Rife, Art History
• Lana Tran, Faculty of Information, Museum Studies

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Aftab Mirzaei, Science & Technology Studies, York University
• Justyna Poray-Wybranowska, English, York University

Undergraduate Student, University of Toronto

• Grace King, English and Environmental Studies

Entitlement and the Common Good

Our group began its work in 2018-2019 with an examination of what entitlement means, in both linguistic and cultural terms. The initial meaning of the word, a provision made in accordance with the legal framework of a society and based on principals oriented to social equality or enfranchisement, competes with a sense of unsupported belief that one is inherently deserving of special privileges or treatment. Our work in the past year on the writings of philosopher Aaron James, Argentinian author Eduardo Sacheri, and psychologist Paul Bloom, led us to the conclusion that the tension is not between entitlement and individual rights, but the common good, which is attainable only by the community but shared by individuals. In the coming year we will explore the dichotomy between entitlement and the common good, with attention to how the language of common good is articulated and justified. We will construct a reading list from relevant texts, from Spanish-speaking colonial discourse to contemporary narrative and film, to build a methodology for analyzing the language of entitlement.

Leads

• Laura Colantoni, FAS Spanish & Portuguese
• Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux, FAS Spanish & Portuguese and Cognitive Science program

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Naomi Nagy, FAS Linguistics
• Victor Rivas, FAS Latin American Studies program
• Nathan Sanders, FAS Linguistics
• Jeffrey Steele, FAS French

Community Professionals

• B. Forrest, Affordable Housing East Non-Profit Housing Corporation
• M. Hadzis, Prison Fellowship Canada
• M.A. Lonardi, Consul of Argentina
• E. Trotter, Archdioceses of Toronto
• M.J. Zatarain, Kintore College
• G. McConnell, psychotherapist
• R. John, mediator

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Yadira Alvarez, Spanish & Portuguese
• Ailen Cruz, Spanish & Portuguese
• Paula Karger, Comparative Literature
• Ruth Maddeux, Linguistics

Imagining a Music-Theatre Curriculum in North America

Music-theatre is "a type of performance in which theatrical actions are created by music-making". In music-theatre performance, "the physical and gestural elements inherent in the music-making are the action, and there is no... separation between stage and instrumental ensembles, nor are there dramatic roles." (Heile, 2016) While there are thriving indie, sound-art, and music-theatre communities throughout North America and Mexico, there has yet to be a university program dedicated to its academic and performance study. This working group brings together scholars, composers, and practitioners whose interests in the fields of music, theatre, performance, and sound converge at the point of music-theatre. We will trace the evolution of music-theatre in North America, with the goal of generating a long-term plan to establish the University of Toronto as a collaborative centre, whether curricular or departmental, for contemporary music-theatre.

Leads

• Aiyun Huang, Faculty of Music
• T. Nikki Cesare Schotzko, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Daniel Bender, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Jacob Gallagher-Ross, UTM English & Drama
• Marla Hlady, UTSC Arts, Culture & Media
• Norbert Palej, Faculty of Music

Faculty members outside University of Toronto

• Shahrokh Yadegari, composer and sound designer, UC-San Diego
• Sandeep Bhagwati, Director, Matralab, Concordia University
• Bruce Barton, Director and writer, University of Calgary

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Jonathan Smith, Faculty of Music
• Tyler Cunningham, Faculty of Music
• Joyce To, Faculty of Music
• Sarah Robbins, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Julia Mattias, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Artists and Professionals outside University of Toronto

• Alyssa Ryvers, Toronto composer
• James Harrison Monaco, NY storyteller/writer/musician
• Jerome Ellis, NY composer/improviser/theatre artist
• David Schotzko, Toronto percussionist and artistic director of Array Music
• Carol Gimbel, Toronto violist and artistic director, Music in the Barns
• Greg Oh, Toronto pianist and curator
• Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, Toronto actor and director

Jesuit History Research Group

Our group is a new initiative bringing together scholars with a shared interest in all things Jesuit: the spiritual, anthropological, literary, political, artistic, educational, linguistic, and scientific legacy of the Jesuits. We will encourage focused inquiries into the Jesuit tradition, as well as longue durée rapprochements between the Old Society (1540-1773) and the Restored Society (1814-). We will examine, without presuppositions, the Society's place and contributions, its successes and failures, within broader historical currents. The complex history of the relationship between First Nations and Jesuit missionaries demands scholarly attention, and here we see an opportunity to engage with the University of Toronto's ongoing reconciliation effort. Our monthly meetings will include workshops with pre-circulated work, and seminar-style discussions of recent publications. At the end of the year we will organize an event that will connect our work with cross-institutional partnerships.

Leads

• Andreas Motsch, FAS French
• Jean-Olivier Richard, SMC Christianity & Culture
• Thomas Worcester, S.J., Regis College

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Paul Cohen, FAS History
• Mairi Cowan, UTM Historical Studies
• Sébastien Drouin, UTSC French & Linguistics
• Francesco Guardiani, FAS Italian Studies
• Grégoire Holtz, FAS French
• Valentina Napolitano, FAS Anthropology
• Stephen Tardif, SMC Christianity & Culture

Faculty Members outside University of Toronto

• Fr. Michael Knox, Regis College
• Sharonah Fredrick, Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Buffalo
• Carlota McAllister, Anthropology, York University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Ziba Amadian, Italian Studies
• Oana Baboi, History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
• Petre Ene, Spanish & Portuguese
• Adam Richter, History & Philosophy of Science and Technology

Undergraduate Students, University of Toronto

• Isaure Vorstman
• Isadora Ateljevic
• Agha Saadaf
• Marco Istasy
• Ksenia Meteleva

Latin American Racial Technologies through the 21st Century

This working group was established in 2018-2019 around the dilemma of contemporary racialization in the Americas as a complex series of practices defined by both regional and national histories of coloniality, and by more recent tendencies tied to practices of democratization and international human rights movements. The concept of 'racial technologies' serves as an approach to thinking through the shifting modalities and actions of race across the Americas. Our meetings this year will be structured around a series of keywords, such as "blackness", "citizenship" and "reparations" that get deployed in different ways across disciplines, regional frameworks, and time periods. Our monthly meeting schedule will alternate between discussions of work-in-progress, and of relevant theoretical readings chosen by the group.

Leads

• Valentina Napolitano, FAS Anthropology
• Luisa Schwartzman, UTM Sociology
• Tamara Walker, FAS History

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Susan Antebi, FAS Spanish & Portuguese
• Ted Sammons, CLTA, FAS and UTSC Anthropology

Faculty, outside University of Toronto

• Gillian McGillivray, History, York University
• Antonio Torres-Ruiz, Equity Studies, York University

Postdoctoral Scholars

• Alexandra González Jiménez, FAS Anthropology
• Eshe Lewis, FAS Latin American Studies

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Diana Barrero, OISE Curriculum Studies & Teacher Development
• Fernando Calderón Figueroa, Sociology
• Roxana Escobar Nuñez, Geography & Planning
• Mariana Ferraz Duarte, Della Lana School of Public Health
• Nae Hanashiro Avila, Spanish & Portuguese
• Ximena Martínez Trabucco, OISE Social Justice Education
• Matias Recharte, Faculty of Music
• Tania Ruiz Chapman, OISE Social Justice Education

Native Performance Culture and the Rhythm of (Re)Conciliation: Re-Membering Ourselves in Deep Time

The Deep Time group enters its fourth year of activity with a deepened and continuing commitment to the processes of building relationships: with each other,with our work, with the communities with and for whom we do this work, with the Indigenous stewards (our treaty partners) in these territories, and with the land itself. It is only through painstaking engagement with the history of settlement that the future of conciliation can be engaged. In the past four years we have worked toward honest encounter, and ethical and sustainable research partnerships, and opportunities to offer our skills, time, and physical labour to support Indigenous community projects that strengthen Indigenous individuals. In the past year, our group collaborated with the Great Lakes Canoe Journey, and we will continue to build this relationship in the coming year. Our work will focus on deepening comprehension of our roles and responsibilities as partners in the Dish with One Spoon Treaty here in the Great Lakes Basin.

Leads

• Jill Carter, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Myrto Koumarianis, Ph.D. cand., Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Antje Budde, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Jon Johnson, FAS Indigenous Studies
• Isabelle Kim, OISE Curriculum, Teaching & Learning
• Trina Moyan, lecturer, Daniels Faculty of Architecture
• Karyn Recollet, FAS Women & Gender Studies

Community Professionals

• Dolleen Manning, Independent Scholar
• Natasha Rojas, alumna, Indigenous Studies
• Hallie Wells, Independent Scholar

University of Toronto staff

• Gabriele Simmons, Centre for Community Partnerships

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Susan Aaron, Faculty of Education
• Sherry Bie, Faculty of Education
• Paula Danckert, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Sara McDowell, Faculty of Education
• Maria Meindl, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Sonia Norris, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Morgan Johnson, Environmental Studies, York University

Undergraduate Students, University of Toronto

• Aisha Cadre, UTM
• Sheila Salvador, FAS Indigenous Studies
• Shirka Urechko, FAS Indigenous Studies

Planetary Resistance: Climate, Computation, and Contingency

This working group aims to explore the intersections of computational practices, their history, and the history of the environment in the longue durée of the modern age since the Industrial Revolution. Contemporary understandings of climate change are predicated on a profound quantification of the environment as a means to understand, and thus to manage, its contingency. From climate modelling to ecology, our conceptual and practical engagements with the environment are profoundly mediated by computational logics. But these logics were not invented along with the computer; they dovetail with longer histories of science and capitalism, and the contingent material world does not always translate into code. We will look at the sites where contingency arises at the planetary scale, at computation's role in producing climate change (both as conceptual object and physical process), and at histories of the planet, the climate, and of computation. Our meetings will include both discussion of published works and of pre-circulated works-in-progress, and our final session will bring in the work-in-progress of an artist or scholar who works at the intersection of these ideas, to be chosen by the group.

Leads

• Scott Richmond, FAS Cinema Studies
• Avery Slater, UTM English & Drama
• Rebecca Woods, FAS History & Philosophy of Science & Technology

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Tania Aguila-Way, FAS English
• James Cahill, FAS Cinema Studies

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Jeni Barton, History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
• Austin Due, History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
• Morgan Harper, Cinema Studies
• Bree Loman, History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
• Félix Veilleux, Cinema Studies

Practices of Commentary

The Practices of Commentary group began in 2018-2019 with the goal of bringing scholars from a wide range of disciplines together to discuss commentary as it is used in historical and literary materials from several traditions.  We emerged with more questions than answers.  In the coming year, we will probe the ways that the conceptual and technical aspects of commentary intersect with technological revolutions (the introductions of paper, print, and digital media; the takeover of palm-leaf manuscripts and papyrus rolls by codices; the shift from oral to textual modes of commentary). Our group will attend to moments of transformation to explore how different commentarial communities responded to material changes.  We will also look at developments in the organization and sociology of these communities, and the ways that these engendered new hermeneutics and interpretive modes.  Finally, we will examine the heritage of 19th-century scholarship, which brought philological methods and theories of commentary that continue to frame contemporary debates about comparative work in the Humanities.

Leads

• Walid Saleh, FAS Study of Religion and Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Kenneth Yu, FAS Classics

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Suzanne Akbari, FAS English and Medieval Studies
• Alexander Andrée, FAS Medieval Studies
• Lorenza Bennardo, FAS Classics
• Elisa Brilli, FAS Italian Studies
• Adam Cohen, FAS Art History
• Bob Gibbs, FAS Philosophy
• Amanda Goodman, FAS East Asian Studies
• Peter King, FAS Philosophy
• Jeannie Miller, FAS Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Enrico Raffaelli, UTM Historical Studies
• Ajay Rao, UTM Historical Studies
• Natalie Rothman, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Markus Stock, FAS German
• Audrey Walton, FAS English

Faculty outside the University of Toronto

• Miguel Angel Toledo, Avestan and Pahlavi Languages & Literatures, University of Salamanca

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

• Erica Loic, UTM Visual Studies

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Shuaib Ally, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Alessia Berardi, Medieval Studies
• Miriam Borden, Jewish Studies
• Anthony Fredette, Medieval Studies
• Florian Muller, German
• Simon Whedbee, Medieval Studies
• Dylan Wilkerson, Medieval Studies

Rethinking Iranian Studies

Rethinking Iranian Studies began in 2018-2019 to explore contemporary debates and disciplinary challenges involved in the study of modern Iran, and to encourage intellectual exchange within the growing community of Iran scholars at the University of Toronto and more widely in the Greater Toronto Area. Iranian modernity is a contested topic and continues to influence current scholarship on Iran. Earlier works framed the 20th and 21st centuries in terms of Western liberal thought, but more recently, a cohort of postcolonial scholars has challenged the framework of dichotomies (such as tradition/modernity, secularism/religion, democracy/theocracy).  Rethinking Iranian Studies engages with this body of scholarship to explore non-Western ideas of modernity and current political and cultural formations in Iran. In the coming year, we will look at Islam and the modern state, the Islamic State (IS) and Islamic forms of governance (the Sharia), and the role of medicalization in the formation of the nation-state in Iran. Leadership of our monthly meetings rotates among group members. In the Fall term, we will explore the existing body of knowledge in these fields, and in the Winter term, members will share works-in-progress.

Leads

• Jairan Gahan, Postdoctoral fellow, FAS Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Jennifer Jenkins, FAS History
• Delbar Khakzad, Ph.D. student, Study of Religion
• Mohamad Tavakoli Targhi, UTM Historical Studies

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Farzaneh Hemmasi, Faculty of Music
• Neda Maghbouleh, UTM Sociology
• Shahrzad Mojab, Faculty of Education
• Nasim Niknafs, Faculty of Music
• Sara Saljoughi, UTSC English
• Victoria Tahmasebi-Birgani, UTM Historical Studies

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Farzin Vejdani, History, Ryerson University
• Nima Naghibi, English, Ryerson University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Saharnaz Samaeinejad, Comparative Literature
• Mahdieh Valizadeh, Comparative Literature
• Shirin Gerami, Anthropology
• Mahshid Zandi, Study of Religion
• Hadi Milanloo, Faculty of Music
• Hamidreza Salehyar, Faculty of Music
• Marjan Moosavi, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Sheragim Jenabzadeh, Faculty of Education

Soundscapes at U of T

A soundscape is a sonic environment. Like the concept of landscape, soundscape has accumulated cultural meanings that indicate the framing of an environment in terms of sound. A great deal of ongoing work at the University of Toronto intersects with studies of sound, space, and place, yet researchers are scattered across three campuses at least a dozen disciplinary units. The goal of this new group is to gather researchers with acoustic-spatial and sonic-environmental interests and/or investments in sonic-artistic practices. This cross-disciplinary group will highlight sound in contemporary humanities discourses, particularly in context of the Jackman Humanities Institute's environmental focus with the 2019-2020 theme of Strange Weather, and it will engage the creative sphere, including sound art as a signifying articulation of space. Our meetings will include discussions of new and in-progress works, at least one guest, and at least one sound walk in Toronto.

Leads

• Joseph Clarke, FAS Art History
• Sherry Lee, Faculty of Music

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Mitchell Akiyama, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
• Marla Hlady, UTSC Arts, Culture & Media
• Lewis Kaye, UTSC Arts, Culture & Media
• Brady Peters, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
• Lilian Radovac, UTM Communication, Culture, Information & Technology
• Stephen Scharper, UTM Anthropology

Librarian, University of Toronto

• Margaret English, Art Library

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Nil Basdurak, Faculty of Music
• Liora Belford, Art History
• Alexandra Fiori, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
• Laura Fox, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design
• Emily MacCallum, Faculty of Music
• Sadie Menicanin, Faculty of Music
• Tegan Niziol, Faculty of Music
• Rupert Nuttle, Art History
• Sherry Ostapovich, Faculty of Education
• Zachary Weinstein, Philosophy
• Eric Woodley, Art History

Tamil Studies

Tamil is a language, but it is also a social and cultural identity that has shifted across time and place. Its study spans the humanities and the social and political sciences, with trajectories in South and Southeast Asia, Europe, North America, and the Diaspora. Although the connection of language and identity is often considered a by-product of the early 20th century linguistic nationalism of the Dravidian movement in South India, a case can be made for the existence of a self-conscious discipline of Tamil studies from the earliest written sources to the present day. We are a diverse group of scholars from the humanities and social sciences who research ancient and modern Tamil sources from a range of disciplines, methods and media in order to understand more fully the ways Tamil has been understood across time and place. This year, we will hold a reading group and workshops on the topics of Tamil philology, literary historiography, and ethnography. We will also co-organize a visiting speaker masterclass and an event to mark the integration of François Gros's Tamil-language collection into the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Leads

• Srilata Raman, FAS Study of Religion
• Kristina Rogahn, Ph.D. student, Study of Religion

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Francis Cody, UTM Anthropology
• Christoph Emmrich, UTM Historical Studies and FAS Study of Religion
• Malavika Kasturi, UTM Historical Studies
• Bhavani Raman, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies

Librarian, University of Toronto

• Natkeeran Ledchumykanthan, UTSC Library Digital Scholarship Unit

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• M. Shobhana Xavier, School of Religion, Queen’s University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Henria Aton, Faculty of Information
• Stephanie Duclos-King, Study of Religion
• Janani Comar, Study of Religion
• Jesse Pruitt, Study of Religion
• Ganga Rudraiah, Cinema Studies
• Siddharth Sridhar, History
• Mirela Stosic, Study of Religion

Afterlives: Institutionality, Survival, Pedagogy

Leads

• Kyle Kinaschuk, Ph.D. student, English
• Tavleen Purewal, Ph.D. student, English
• Karina Vernon, UTSC English

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Jill Carter, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Rebecca Comay, Philosophy and Comparative Literature
• Dina Georgis, Women & Gender Studies Kajri Jain, UTM Visual Studies
• Katie Kilroy-Marac, UTSC Anthropology
• Katie Larson, UTSC English
• Lee Maracle, FAS Indigenous Studies
• Rijuta Mehta, FAS English
• Valentina Napolitano, FAS Anthropology
• John Paul Ricco, UTM Visual Studies

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Ada Jaarsma, Philosophy, Mount Royal University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Suze Berkhout, Faculty of Medicine, Psychiatry
• Rohan Ghatage, English
• Tal Isaacson, Comparative Literature
• Sophia Jaworski, Anthropology
• Rita Laszlo, German
• Kaspars Reinis, Comparative Literature
• Sujata Thapa-Bhattarai, Geography & Urban Planning
• Tobi Wilczek, German

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Aadita Chaudhury, Science & Technology Studies, York University
• Ella Wilhelm, German, University of Chicago

Undergraduate Student, University of Toronto

• Alexandra Napier, FAS Women & Gender Studies

Bridging Disciplines in Manuscript Studies

Leads

• Suzanne Akbari, FAS English and Medieval Studies
• Kari North, Ph.D. candidate, History

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Alexander Andrée, FAS Medieval Studies and St. Michael’s College
• Alexandra Bolintineanu, FAS Medieval Studies and Woodsworth College
• Adam Cohen, FAS Art
• Mairi Cowan, UTM Historical Studies
• Alexandra Gillespie, UTM English & Drama
• Shami Ghosh, FAS History and Medieval Studies
• Mark Meyerson, FAS History and Medieval Studies
• Michèle Mulchahey, FAS L.E. Boyle Chair in Manuscript Studies at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
• Jeannie Miller, FAS Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Linda Northrup, FAS Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Cillian O’Hogan, FAS Medieval Studies
• Natalie Rothman, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies
• Maria E. Subtelny, FAS Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Jarrett Welsh, FAS Classics

Staff, University of Toronto

• P.J. (Pearce) Carefoote, Librarian, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
• Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Librarian, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS)
• Natalie Oeltjen, Assistant to the Director, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
• Heather Pigat, Collections Manager, University of Toronto Art Museum

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Justin Arnwine, Medieval Studies
• Alessia Berardi, Medieval Studies
• Gregory Fewster, Study of Religion
• Cai Henderson, Medieval Studies
• Jessica Henderson, Medieval Studies
• Lara Howerton, Medieval Studies
• Lale Javanshir, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Jared Johnson, Medieval Studies
• Julia Mattison, English Kari North, History
• Matthew Orsag, Medieval Studies
• Lane Springer, Medieval Studies
• Patrick Strange, Study of Religion
• Steven Teasdale, History Nora Thorburn, Medieval Studies

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

• Andrew Dunning, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the University of Cambridge Faculty of History

Building Environmental Humanities at the University of Toronto

Our goal is to establish a permanent home for environmental humanities at the University of Toronto.  This working group will foster this goal by building a network of scholars who will create a strategic plan to launch this much-needed institutional hub. Throughout the year, group meetings will develop the networks which are so essential to the success of this project – and a task we’ve already begun by establishing a listerv.  We plan to take advantage of as many existing resources as possible.  One session, for instance, will consist of lightening round introductions to group members’ scholarship.  Other meetings will research the practical work of institutionalization by consulting with other University of Toronto projects which have successfully moved from incubation to independence, including Sexual Diversity Studies and the Digital Humanities Network.  This local expertise will be invaluable in developing both a concrete development plan as well as an intellectual roadmap for the project.  Our capstone event for the year will host a co-founder of the highly successful Princeton Environmental Humanities Project.  This session will steer us towards establishing a creative, productive and sustainable environmental humanities hub at the University of Toronto.

Leads

• Judith Brunton, Ph.D. student, Study of Religion
• Andrea Most, FAS English
• Alexandra Rahr, FAS Centre for the Study of the United States

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Alan Ackerman, FAS English
• Mark Cheetham, FAS Art
• Ken Derry, UTM Historical Studies
• Kajri Jain, UTM Visual Studies

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Michaela Rife, Art
• Caroline Holland, English

Graduates Students, other universities

• Samane Hemmat, Law, York University
• Zoe Heyn-Jones, Visual Arts, York University
• Colin Sutherland, Geography, York University

Critical China Studies

Now in its second year, this organically-formed working group brings together the rapidly-growing community of China specialists at the University of Toronto and in the greater Toronto area, fulfilling an urgent scholarly need to foster productive and intellectually animated conversation.  The group includes China scholars who use diverse methodological lenses and disciplinary tools, including traditional sinology, the history of science, gender studies, print and visual culture, art history, law, social theory, and postcolonial studies. Our graduate students, who make up half the group, benefit from the opportunity to serve as informal discussants for precirculated papers by local and outside professors.  In the coming year, we will emphasize reading primary sources in order to help both graduate students and faculty to hone their research and analytical skills.  In so doing, we seek not only to expand the boundaries of China studies, but also to use China-based historical materials to open up new theoretical questions that have implications in other fields.

Lead

• Tong Lam, Historical Studies (UTM)

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Ruoyun Bai, Humanities-Media Studies (UTSC)
• Alana Boland, Geography
• Li Chen, Humanities-History (UTSC)
• Linda Feng, East Asian Studies
• Yi Gu, Humanities-Art History (UTSC)
• Ping-Chun Hsien, Social Sciences-Sociology (UTSC)
• Tong Lam, Historical Studies (UTM)
• Jennifer Purtle, Art
• Meng Yue, Comparative Literature/East Asian Studies
• Yi-Ching Wu, Anthropology/East Asian Studies
• Brian Chiasson, History (Wilfrid Laurier University)
• Joshua Fogel, History (York University)
• Joan Judge, History (York University)  

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Xi Chen, East Asian Studies
• Jonathan Doughty, History
• Monica Guu, Art
• Michael Lam, History
• Jennifer Lechy, History
• Jessica Tsui Yan Li, Comparative Literature
• Yanfei Li, East Asian Studies
• Yan Lu, Comparative Literature
• Nick McGee, History
• Sally Niu, Women and Gender Studies; Asia-Pacific Studies
• James Poborsa, East Asian Studies
• Meaghan Marian, History
• Mark McConaghy, East Asian Studies
• Elizabeth Parke, Art
• Akiko Takesue, Art
• Yao (Adam) Liu, B.A. program, Asia-Pacific Studies
• Doris Ha-Lin Sung, Art (York University)
• Hank Zhao, East Asian Studies

Entitlement

The goal of this group is to examine the construct of entitlement in the Latin American cultural, literary and linguistic context, through analyses of issues of identity and ethics, the concept of personal rights, the literary representation of the entitled person, and the representation of the subject in grammar and narrative. In English, the meaning of the word has evolved from the original interpretation as a legitimate claim to an illegitimate claim, the illusion that one is inherently deserving of privileges. Spanish has no equivalent term, but marks the contrast between the legitimate and non-legitimate interpretation by using a reflexively marked verb; i.e creer (‘believe’) vs. creerse (‘feel entitled to’). We aim to explore relevant texts from Spanish-speaking colonial discourse to contemporary narrative and film, in order to build a methodology for analyzing the language of entitlement. Through sustained interdisciplinary dialogue we seek to (i) develop a framework for examining how the concepts of common language supervene into higher order cultural constructs that define entitlement; (ii) study whether certain linguistics markers can be tools for characterizing the entitled discourse, and for describing the challenge of mutual recognition, or its absence inherent in the entitled context. Such examination is urgent within the current context in which the language of rights and access to rights is used by antagonist sectors of society, ranging from corporate leaders to the advocates for the homeless, from #metoo to the incel fringe, from the religious right to the trans movement, from #BlackLivesMatter to white supremacists. The necrotic individualism and accretion of subjectivity that is seen to emerge in the formation of some local subcultures, as well as in the rise of the current international cohort of narcissistic heads of state, calls for an inquiry into the entitled discourse. These are some of the general questions that will guide our group discussions and interactions with invited guests: Is entitlement a legal structure, as in the original sense, or an affective state? How do we distinguish between entitlement and rights in the current context of highly fluid, abrupt shifts in societal norms? When the victim and the victimizer use the same language, what is norm and what is transgression?

Leads

• Laura Colantoni, FAS Spanish & Portuguese
• Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux, FAS Spanish & Portuguese and Cognitive Science program  

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Sanda Munjic, FAS Spanish & Portuguese
• Victor Rivas, Instructor, Latin American Studies program
• Jeffrey Steeles, FAS French
• Naomi Nagy, Linguistics

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Susan Ehrlich, Languages, Literatures & Linguistics, York University   

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Yadira Alvarez, Spanish & Portuguese
• Ailen Cruz, Spanish & Portuguese
• Paula Karger, Linguistics
• Ruth Maddeaux, Linguistics

Latin American Racial Technologies through the 21st Century

Leads

• Susan Antebi, FAS Spanish & Portuguese
• Valentina Napolitano, FAS Anthropology
• Luisa Schwartzman, UTM Sociology   

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Ted Sammons, CLTA FAS Anthropology
• Tamara Walker, FAS History

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Gillian McGillivray, History, York University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Roxana Escobar Ñuñez, Geography & Planning
• Fernando Calderón Figueroa, Sociology
• Tania Ruiz-Chapman, OISE Social Justice Education

Native Performance Culture and the Rhythm of Re-Conciliation: Re-Membering Ourselves in Deep Time

As a nation built on the Doctrines of Discovery, Extinguishment and Terra Nullius, Canada’s existence, as an internationally recognized sovereign state, relies upon a rigorous and methodical campaign to sanitize the present moment of Indigenous presence and eventually to erase all traces of Indigeneity from living memory. Resisting such erasure (in place, historical memory, or cognitive space), Indigenous artists and activists are scripting interventions for myriad “stages” through which to dislodge colonization from the Indigenous body and through which to excise the psycho-spiritual scars that affect the many survivors of relocation, re-education, the sixties scoop, forced sterilization, etc. Our membership is committed to facilitating such interventions; hence, we seek to plunge ourselves into “deep time,” so that we may devise works in the present moment that build legacy for future generations. It is only through painstaking engagement with the tangled history of settlement that future conciliation might be operationalized. To facilitate such conciliation in our own work, members of the Deep Time Working group have (since 2016) embraced opportunities to explore and test out the means by which to mediate possible sites (topographical, cognitive, ceremonial, and performative) of profound encounter and renewal. Additionally, we will seek opportunities to meaningfully offer our skills, time and physical labor to support Indigenous community projects that work to strengthen Indigenous individuals.

Leads

• Jill Carter, FAS Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Myrto Koumarianos, Ph.D. student, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Heidi Bohaker, FAS History
• Ante Budde, FAS Drama Theatre & Performance Studies
• Susan Hill, Director, FAS Indigenous Studies
• Stephen Johnson, UTM English & Drama
• Jon Jonson, Instructor, Woodsworth College
• Pamela Klassen, FAS Study of Religion
• Trina Moyan, Instructor, FAS Urban Planning
• V.K. Preston, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Karyn Recollet, FAS Women & Gender Studies

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Alberto Guevara, Performance Studies, York University

Independent Researchers

• Dr. Erin Soros
• Dr. Dolleen Manning

Community Members

• Sylvia Plain, Great Lakes Canoe Project
• Vivien Recollet, Anishnaabekwe Knowledge-Holder

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Susan Aaron, OISE
• Sherry Bie, OISE
• James Bird, Faculty of Architecture
• Paula Danckert, Diaspora & Transnational Studies
• Sasha Kovacs, Diaspora & Transnational Studies
• Sara McDowell, OISE
• Maria Meindl, Diaspora & Transnational Studies
• Sonia Norris, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Jenny Salisbury, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Graduate Students, outside University of Toronto

• Megan Davies, Performance Studies, York University

Undergraduate Students, University of Toronto

• Oliver Miller, Indigenous Studies
• Sheilah Salvador, Indigenous Studies
• Shurka Urechko, Indigenous Studies

Alumni

• Natasha Rojas, Indigenous Studies
• Lydia Li, OISE / staff Hart House
• Muriel Lopez, Indigenous Studies
• Gabrielle Simmons, Indigenous Studies

Postsecular or Postcritique? New Approaches to Reading Religion

Cultural studies is undergoing a watershed moment. Critique, long the dominant aim and posture in much of the humanities, has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Rita Felski, Bruno Latour, Sharon Marcus, Stephen Best, and Eve Sedgwick, for example, have poked at the assumptions behind critical theory’s reflexive concern with unmasking ideologies, with illuminating our supposedly false consciousness, and for penetrating beyond the surface of the text to an unsullied real meaning. Adopting Paul Ricoeur’s influential turn for the attitude left in the wake of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, Felski argues that the “hermeneutics of suspicion” tends to flatten agencies and objects, confident in explanatory models that boil down all social life into a handful of similar, symptomatic readings. By contrast, “postcritical” reading emphasizes curiosity over interrogation; it approaches cultural objects hoping for understanding, not clouded by paranoia; it affirms that, for lay and scholarly readers alike, engagement with texts enchants the world rather than demystifies it. Yet for some twenty years now, a similar shift has been underway in postsecular studies. Scholars in that field have argued that the secularization thesis is woefully inadequate in accounting for the complexity of beliefs and practices that persist even to this day. Modernity is not synonymous with the loss of faith, they contend, but rather marks a careful re-negotiation of religion’s role in collective life. Rebuffing critical theory’s reflexive suspicion, postsecular work has consequently pioneered new methods of attending to the religious, generating rich, critically sophisticated readings of texts in ways that seem to anticipate the late “postcritical turn.” Unsurprisingly, a recent forum wondered about the extent to which these two theoretical vocabularies overlap, and proposed that future work would need to articulate their similarities and differences. Our working group intends to discuss key texts bridging these fields (works proposed include those by Felski, Latour, literary scholar Lori Branch, and the sociologist of religion, Danièle Hervieu-Léger), share work-in-progress (with special focus on that by graduate students), and host at least two visiting speakers invested in these issues. Though we remain rooted in literary interests, our questions are interdisciplinary and generously ecumenical: what does it mean to engage in postcritical (not uncritical) thinking on religion? Is that synonymous with a postsecular approach? Is postcritique secular, for that matter—and if so, in what sense?

Lead

• Alex Eric Hernandez, FAS English  

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Randy Boyagoda, FAS English
• Paul Stevens, FAS English
• Steven Tardif, SMC Christianity & Culture program
• Barton Scott, FAS Study of Religion

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Kimberly Rodda, English
• Amy Coté, English
• Lindsay Mason English

Practices of Commentary

Practices of Commentary will develop new collaborative links and to make use of shared interdisciplinary research interests at the University of Toronto and beyond, centred on the comparative and interdisciplinary study of commentary. Commentary is all around us – as journalism and scholarship, in the political domain, and via social media. Our working group will place this practice in its historical perspective, exploring and disseminating fundamental knowledge of the religious, literary, and scientific uses of commentary in premodern cultures. The participants‘ research interests span cultures from East and South Asia through the Middle East to Europe. We aim to advance our knowledge of the role of commentary within text-based cultures, including its functions across a wide range of media and languages. Through the richly contextualized interdisciplinary study of commentary traditions in their historical perspective, this group will collectively study how commentary functions as a central mode of the Humanities' engagement with the world. This Working Group will also collaborate with a similar interdisciplinary working group (on Kommentarpraktiken) at the Humanities Center at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, and we will schedule at least one joint remote meeting. Our forum, which will meet at least once a month, will proceed in two steps. In the Fall Term, we will discuss pre-circulated foundational texts on commentary from a variety of fields, including texts by Pollock; McCrea/Patil; Freschi/Maas; Minnis; Assmann; Smalley; de Lubac; Ohly; B. Smith; Woodmansee; Most; König/Whitmarsh; and others as determined by the group. In the Spring Term, we will explore new avenues in approaching commentary by pairing additional theoretical readings with the work in progress presented by group members.

Leads

• Walid Saleh, FAS Study of Religion
• Markus Stock, FAS German   

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Suzanne Akbari, FAS English and Medieval Studies
• Alexander Andrée, Medieval Studies
• Elisa Brilli, Italian Studies
• Kara Gaston, UTSC English
• Shami Ghosh, FAS History and Medieval Studies
• Amanda Goodman, FAS East Asian Studies
• Peter King, FAS Philosophy
• Jeannie Miller, FAS Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Luther Obrock, UTM Historical Studies
• Ajay Rao, UTM Historical Studies
• Audrey Walton, FAS English   

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Shuaib Ally, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Deanna Brooks, Medieval Studies
• Cara Bruni, German
• André Flicker, German
• Anthony Fredette, Medieval Studies
• Katie Menendez, Medieval Studies
• Francesco Pica, Medieval Studies
• Joel Richmond, Study of Religion
• Ramzi Taleb, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Dylan Wilkerson, Medieval Studies
• Parisa Zahiremami, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations

Refiguring Iranian Studies

The goal of this working group is to explore the timely debates and disciplinary challenges confronting studies of modern Iran, as well as to engender intellectual exchange amongst a growing interdisciplinary community of scholars, both at the University of Toronto and in the broader GTA area. Beginning in the 19th century, Iran has gone through major transformations of its state and society. Starting with the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), the foundations of its twentieth-century state were put in place. This included the emergence of new regimes of governance and the establishment of modern legal, economic, medical, and social welfare institutions. At the same time, technological advancement, urban-rural migration, and changes associated with increasing globalization radically shifted people’s everyday lives, from their cultural practices to literary and artistic productions. Iranian modernity has been a controversial and contested topic of investigation as it continues to influence contemporary studies of Iran. The study of the twentieth and the twenty first centuries has itself gone through major historiographical shifts. Earlier scholarly works framed this period in terms of theories of Western liberal thought: the dichotomous conceptions of tradition/modernity, secularism/religion and democracy/theocracy. Over the past two decades however, a cohort of post-colonial scholars have challenged these frameworks. This reading group engages with and builds on this recent body of scholarship to explore new methodological and theoretical frameworks that allow for an exploration of non-Western genealogies of modernity and modern political and cultural formations in Iran. These issues will be explored across a broad range of disciplines, particularly history, literary studies, religious studies, anthropology, cinema studies, ethnomusicology, and women and gender studies. This reading group will be a valuable opportunity for junior and senior scholars of modern Iran, for graduate students and faculty members, who are otherwise confined within disciplinary and institutional fields, to come together to create a new shared body of knowledge of the field. In collaboration with the Toronto Initiative for Iranian Studies, the working group will host monthly scholarly meetings with a rotating leadership among group members. In the first semester, we will explore the existing body of knowledge that introduces and engages with major disciplinary challenges to this field. In the second semester, members will share their work-in-progress, which will be pre-circulated to the group as a whole. We will also be inviting two leading scholars in the field to present their most recent scholarship and to reflect on issues of larger methodological concern.

Leads

• Jairan Gahan, Postdoc, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Jennifer Jenkins, FAS History
• Delbar Khakzad, Ph.D. student, Study of Religion
• Mohammad Tavakoli Targhi, UTM Historical Studies

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Farzaneh Hemmasi, Faculty of Music
• Neda Maghbouleh, UTM Sociology
• Shahrzad Mojab, Leadership, Higher & Adult Education, OISE
• Nazim Niknafs, Faculty of Music
• Sara Saljoughi, UTSC English

Faculty outside University of Toronto

• Farzin Vejdani, History, Ryerson University

Postdoctoral Fellow

• Amir Khadem, Comparative Literature; Jackman Humanities Institute

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Zainab Farrokhi, Women & Gender Studies
• Amir Ganjavi, OISE
• Sheragin Jenabzadeh, History
• Hadi Milanloo, Faculty of Music
• Marjan Moosavi, Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies
• Hamidra Salehyar, Faculty of Music
• Saharnaz Samaeinejad, Comparative Literature
• Mary Yoshinari, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Mahshid Zandi, Study of Religion

Graduate Students outside University of Toronto

• Lydia Wytenbroek, History, York University

Simmel Discussion Group

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) is widely considered to be one of the founding figures of sociology.  With 2018 marking the centenary of his death, the 2018-2019 academic year is an opportune moment for serious reflection about the relevance of his thought today. However, the fate of Simmel’s reception has not been without its complications. The first generations of North American sociologists were familiar with Simmel’s writings in German and made his ideas central to their work – indeed, many of Simmel’s texts were published in English translation in The American Journal of Sociology before they appeared in German.  Yet, in the ensuing century Simmel was only selectively translated. Simmel’s magnum opus Soziologie, for instance, has only recently been completely translated. This piecemeal reception is further complicated by the fact that the only existent translation (by Anthony Blasi, Anton Jacobs, and Mathew Kanjirathinkal and introduced by Horst Helle) is not only exclusively available in hardcover at the price of USD 299.84 but also seriously flawed, as critics like Donald Levine and others have observed. Parallel to this disciplinary history within the field of Sociology, Simmel has played a major role in philosophy, Critical Theory, and cultural studies. Yet here as well the reception has been selective and spotty, and oblivious to the Simmel reception in sociology. While this situation poses serious challenges, it is also an opportunity for colleagues in the social sciences and the humanities to work together.  This is the goal of our working group.  In particular, we are inspired by the strikingly innovative and original impulse of Simmel, which offers an alternative to the thought of Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons. In contrast, Simmel’s emphasis on social interaction as dynamically linked to what he calls “form” gives the field of social and cultural theory as well as sociology a different outlook, which we wish to articulate and develop. In the age of information technology and the interest in understanding social networks and media, Simmel is now re-emerging as one of the long-neglected theorists of modernity. Our group’s project is to return to Simmel and see how reading his 1908 Soziologie through the lens of his 1917 classic but brief and concise Grundfragen der Soziologie (comprising only 10% of the length of Soziologie) attunes our eyes to trace the productive tension between his use of “form” and a vitalist impetus already at play in his earlier work. This work will be particularly fruitful, in that it brings together Germanists, Philosophers, cultural theorists, and Sociologists to mutually learn from one another. The plan for the academic year 2018-19 is to read and discuss Simmel’s Soziologie with an eye on his later Grundfragen. We will read this text in a group in which a critical mass of the participants have native or near-native command of German. Reading the German and English translation side by side, the group’s project will also be to discuss possibilities for an alternative, long overdue new English translation. We have 10 meetings planned during the terms to parse the book and one additional initial meeting to discuss in advance of this the Grundfragen der Soziologie.

Leads

• Willi Goetschel, FAS German and Philosophy
• Dan Silver, UTSC Sociology   

Members

Faculty, University of Toronto

• Bonnie Erickson FAS Sociology
• Steve Hoffman, UTM Sociology
• Mark Kingwell, FAS Philosophy
• Michael Lambek, UTSC Anthropology
• Vanina Leschziner, FAS Sociology
• Sida Liu, UTM Sociology
• Paula Maurutto, UTM Sociology
• Erik Schneiderhan, UTM Sociology
• Owen Ware, UTM Philosophy

Postdoctoral Fellow outside University of Toronto

• Vasuki Shanmuganathan, Health Policy & Management, York University

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Tyler Bateman, Sociology
• Milos Brocic, Sociology
• Fernando Calderon Figueroa, Sociology
• Yvonne Daoleuxay, Sociology
• Natalie Helberg, Philosophy
• Rita Laszlo, German
• Emily Pascoe, Study of Religion
• Taylor Price, Sociology
• Andrea Roman, Sociology
• Ioana Sendriou, Sociology
• Tobias Wilczek, German

Sovereignty and the State in South Asia, Past and Present: Mediating Divine and Secular Power

Sovereignty and the State in South Asia is a Working Group emerging from the South Asian Religions Reading Group (SARG) convened by faculty and graduate students in the Department for the Study of Religion over the past decade. The SARG originally focused on Indology, and later broadened its focus to engage more broadly with South Asian religions scholarship.This year's working group will engage faculty and graduate students in the South Asian Humanities at UTM, UTSC and UTSG. We seek to begin an extended conversation that explores the relationship between the state, power, and religion that engages colleagues in Humanities disciplines across the tri-campus system.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In our eight sessions, we intend to interrogate the histories, memories, material cultures, and power dynamics of different expressions of governance such as kingship, democracy, and postcolonial religious republics in South Asia. The group will provide opportunities for members to present work-in-progress, and we will do close readings of texts. Key questions include: How do colonial and nationalist reconstructions of the past rewrite dynastic histories in South Asia? How do contemporary political discourses in South Asia engage traditional categories of state, power, polity, and ethics?

Leads

• Karen Ruffle, UTM Historical Studies
• Nika Kuchuk, Ph.D. student, Study of Religion

Members

Faculty Members, University of Toronto

• Malaviki Kasturi, UTM Historical Studies
• Luther Obrock, UTM Historical Studies
• Kristin Plys, UTM Sociology
• Ajay Rao, UTM Historical Studies
• Bart Scott, UTM Historical Studies
• Jayeeta Sharma, UTSC Historical & Cultural Studies

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

• Sanchia DeSouza, History
• Usman Hamid, Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Nabeel Jafri, Study of Religion
• Fizza Joffrey, Study of Religion
• Faisal Kamal, Political Science
• Adeel Mawani, Study of Religion
• Jonathan Peterson, Study of Religion
• Krissy Rogahn, Study of Religion