From July 2024 onward, including books and articles, as well as podcasts and media coverage of faculty research. For the summary of entries from January to June 2024, see the DSR Spring 2024 Roundup Newsletter.
November 2024
Jeremy Schipper marked two new publications: “‘The Promises of Scripture were All for the Black People’: Sojourner Truth on the Blood of Abel and the Lamb,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 92 (2024): 130-139, and “‘The Stamp of Their Own Iniquity’: Ottobah Cugoano on the Mark of Cain, Noah’s Curse and Enslavers,” The Journal of Theological Studies 75 (2024): 291-297.
Affiliate faculty member Kamari Maxine Clarke is featured in “Absence of Knowledge: Recovering Lost Narratives,” an episode of Humanities at Large, the Jackman Humanities Institute podcast. She discusses her work on absences in historical knowledge and archives, particularly in the context of Black and Indigenous lives.
MA student Emily Dumais' article, “Disability and Bodily Difference in Ancient Egypt between the Second Intermediate Period and Roman Periods,” recently appeared in Vol. 14 of the Undergraduate Journal for Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations (pp 6-25).
Marsha Hewitt's "Trance, Dreams, and Possession: A Comparative Psychoanalytic Study" has been published in Ideas of Possession: Interdisciplinary and Transcultural Perspectives, edited by Nicole Bauer and Andrew Doole, Oxford University Press (2024).
"Pilgrimage in a Globalizing World" by Simon Coleman has been published in in Current History (2024) 123 (856): 315–317
October 2024
Pamela Klassen’s chapter, “Remediating Colonialism: Stories of Gold in Harvard’s Natural History Museum,” appears in the just published Museums as Ritual Sites: Civilizing Rituals Reconsidered (Routledge). She wrote this chapter together with Claire Neid, a student in a course taught while she was a Visiting Professor at Harvard. Also featured in the book are chapters by two DSR alumni, “Living with Others: Fashioning a Post-Secular Citizen in the British Museum” (Yaniv Feller, PhD, 2016) and “Scenes of Ritual Intimacy: Museums and the Display of Magical Practice” (Marisa Karyl Franz, PhD, 2019).
Affiliate faculty member Michael Lambek’s book Behind the Glass is the subject of a review symposium in the latest issue of HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Michael’s recent publications also include “Kinship Conceived and Lived” in an edited collection called Difficult Attachments: Anxieties of Kinship and Care, an afterword called “Not Ethnography but Ethnosophy!” in an edited collection entitled Between Life and Thought: Existential Anthropology and the Study of Religion, and “Ethnography and Ethical Life”, a contribution to the American Ethnologist Forum: “What Good Is Anthropology? Celebrating 50 Years of American Ethnologist.”
Kevin White contributed to a piece on NPR's national show, Morning Edition, called "In the U.S. it’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It’s Thanksgiving in Canada."
Kenneth Green’s book, The Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim: From Revelation to the Holocaust, has been reviewed on its Marginalia Review of Books forum by James A. Diamond (University of Waterloo), “The Devastation of Philosophy: Nazi Jurisprudence, the Shoah, and Fackenheim’s Transcendental Wonder of Resistance.” He also published "Leo Strauss on Religion: Some Introductory Considerations," his Series Editor introduction for Leo Strauss on Religion: Writings and Interpretations, ed. Svetozar Minkov & Rasoul Namazi (SUNY Press, 2024).
Affiliate faculty member Valentina Napolitano's co-authored article, “Holy Infrastructures: Catholicism, Detroit Borderlands, and the Elements,”was published in Comparative Studies in Society and History in August 2024.
Ajay Rao's comments in his capacity as UTM's vice-dean of graduate studies and postdoctoral affairs feature in this article about the establishment at UTM of Ontario’s first endowed chair in Sikh studies. With $2.5 million from Dr. Davindra Singh, matched by the university for a total of $5 million, this endowment builds on the recent momentum in Sikh studies, promoting new research and advancing knowledge and outreach initiatives, including engagement with the Sikh community locally and globally.
J. Barton Scott’s review of the movie Heretic (which he describes as “a comparative religion serial killer film”) was published by the Journal of Religion & Film in its section on the Toronto International Film Festival.
September 2024
Chris Miller, Jackman Humanities Institute-Critical Digital Humanities Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the DSR and supervised by the Chair, Pamela Klassen, has been featured by A&S News. The article, “A new way to say goodbye: Inside the growing popularity of green burial,” discusses his project that examines the increasing popularity of alternatives to traditional approaches to funerary practices.
Affiliate faculty member Ann Jervis was the featured guest on an OnScript podcast in a discussion of her book, Paul and Time. Her book is also the subject of a month-long Syndicate biblical studies forum.
Naomi Seidman’s co-organized conference, “After Orthodoxy: Cultural Creativity and the Break with Tradition,” took place September 15 and 16, 2024 in New York. Co-organized under the auspices of Naomi’s SSHRC Connections grant, the conference included a presentation by DSR PhD student Amy Jemmett and the participation of DSR MA student Chana Weiss. An article in NY Jewish Week, “A NYC conference celebrates the cultural creativity of formerly Orthodox Jews,” includes an interview with Naomi and co-organizer Zalman Newfield (Hunter College).
J. Barton Scott’s book, Slandering the Sacred: Blasphemy Law and Religious Affect in Colonial India, has been recognized with its own forum in the prestigious Marginalia Review of Books, which includes reflections on the book by an interdisciplinary panel of scholars.
Reid Locklin guested on two podcasts, discussing his book Hindu Mission, Christian Mission: Soundings in Comparative Theology (see July below), with New Books in Indian Religions and Multifaith Matters.
PhD candidate Paul Kim's first publication, “Kant and the Moral Need to Limit Theoretical Reason: An Expansion of Hare's Concept of Rational Instability," was published in the March 2024 issue of Toronto Journal of Theology.
PhD candidate Anusha Sudindra Rao's book, How to Love in Sanskrit, an anthology of translated love poetry from over eighty Sanskrit and Prakrit texts, was released in early 2024 (HarperCollins India). In August 2024. the book was released in Kindle and hardback formats in Canada.
August 2024
Jeremy Schipper was interviewed about his book, Denmark Vesey’s Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial, for the New Books Network podcast. >> Listen
The August 2024 edition of the Buddhist Studies Footnotes podcast episode, “Buddhist environmental ethics for a more-than-human world,” produced by Frances Garrett, features a conversation with Colin Simons, Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. >> Listen
July 2024
Reid Locklin's book, Hindu Mission, Christian Mission: Soundings in Comparative Theology was published in May 2024 by SUNY Press, and offers a new, interreligious approach to questions of mission and conversion, grounded in a close study of the Chinmaya Mission, Ramakrishna Mission and other movements associated with the Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedānta.