Completed theses

Ph.D.

Richard Bernier
Topic: The Sacrament of Confirmation in the Roman Catholic Tradition: A History of Interpretations and Proposal for Integration.
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow

Nathan Gibbard
Topic: Superman in a secular age: an examination of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age through the Lens of the superhero genre.
Supervisor: Daniel Cere

Juli Gittinger
Topic: Cyber-pujas, Internet Hindus, and Virtual Hindutva- Virtual Communities and “Cultural Regrouping” for American NRIs.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Eliza Rosenberg
Topic: “When Mr. Lamb took Ms. Jerusalem to be his loftily wedded wife:" marriage, slave-trading, and violent justice in Revelation 17-22.
Supervisors: Ellen Aitken

Shayna Sheinfeld
Topic: Between Destruction and Community: Crises of Leadership in Life and Literature After 70.
Supervisor: Gerbern Oegema

M.A.

Benjamin Jacob
Topic: Metaphor and phenomenology of religion: Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics and the interanimation of discourses.
Supervisors: Garth Green

Marla MacDonald
Topic: Ancient athletics and memorializing the dead in 1 Corinthians 4:9 and 9:24-27.
Supervisors: Ian Henderson

Elvira Vitouchanskaia
Topic: The concept of God in Kant and Fichte.
Supervisors: Garth Green

Elizabeth Welch
Topic: Beyond the “right to die” and the “right to life” debate in Disorders of Consciousness: Reframing the ethical concerns through the writings of Paul Ricoeur.
Supervisors: Gaelle Fiasse and Carolyn Ells

Ph.D.

Joshua Hollman
Topic: The Word of Concordance: Nicholas of Cusa's De pace fidei and the metaphysics of Christian-Muslim dialogue.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Shittal Sharma
Topic: A prestigious path to grace: class, modernity, and female religiosity in Pustimarg Vaisnavism.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Meredith Warren
Topic: My flesh is meat indeed: theophagy and christology in John 6:51c-58.
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken

M.A.

Catherine Aldred
Topic: Rhetoric, Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning: Innovations in First Nations’ Language Bible Translation.
Supervisor: Ian Henderson

John Bellingham
Topic: The Eucharistic Theology of John Owen.
Supervisor: Torrancy Kirby

Jennifer Divall
Topic: Realizations of a Wandering Tibetan Yogi: Exploring the Life and Songs of Godrakpa (1170-1249).
Supervisor: Lara Braitstein

Lauren Steinman
Topic: Religion and the Problem of Heterosexism: Sexual Orientation, Prejudice, and Religious Liberty.
Supervisor: Daniel Cere

Ph.D.

Ranganathan Balasubramanian
Topic: Śaiva Siddhānta Polemics: A Translation and Analysis of the Civañāṉa Cittiyār—Parapakkam.
Supervisors: Katherine Young, Lara Braitstein

Christopher Durante
Topic: Public bioethics & the reality of religious pluralism: coping with moral diversity in bioethical methodology.
Supervisor: Gaelle Fiasse

Jeffrey Keiser
Topic: The Indwelling God.
Supervisor: Ellen B. Aitken

Lei Kuan Lai
Topic: Creating a New Sangha for New China.
Supervisors: G. Victor Hori, Robin Yates

Jessica Main
Topic: "Only Shinran will not betray us": Takuechi Ryō'on (1891-1967), the Ōtani-ha administration, and «burakumin».
Supervisor: Katherine Young

M.A.

Melissa Davidson
Topic: Preaching the Great War: Canadian Anglicans and the war sermon 1914-1918.
Supervisor: John Simons

Victor Temprano
Topic: The scholar and the sage: Sallie B. King, David Loy, and Thích Nhất Hạnh.
Supervisor: Lara Braitstein

Stephanie Machabee
Topic: The Gendered Performance of the “Cheap, Unseemly, and Readily Despised” One: A Rhetorical Understanding of the Portrayal of Blandina in the Martyrs of Lyons and Vienne.
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken and Patricia Kirkpatrick

Ph.D.

Dean Brady
Topic: A Grammar of Pauline Religious Experience.
Supervisor: Ian Henderson

Mohammad Miraly
Topic: Faith and world: contemporary Ismaili social and political thought.
Supervisors: Daniel Cere, Malek Abasaab

Ahmad Obiedat
Topic: Mario Bunge's worldview and its implications for the modernization of Arabic-Islamic philosophy.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

M.A.

Lisa Blake
Topic: Visualizing Amman: Womanhood, the Goddess and Middle-class Modernity in Tamil Religious Cinema.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Mona Sabouri
Topic: Revising Catholic sexual ethics: nuptial mysticism and John Paul II's theology of the body.
Supervisor: Daniel Cere

Anna Samuelson
Topic: He dances, she shakes: the possessed mood of nonduality in Buddhist tantric sex.
Supervisor: Lara Braitstein

Ph.D.

Andrew Blakeslee
Topic: Two Theories of Religious Diversity: Process, Pluralism and John Hick's Pluralistic Hypothesis.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

David Goodin
Topic: Albert Schweitzer's Reverence for Life: Its Relevance for Contemporary Environmental Philosophy.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Cory Labrecque
Topic: Transhumanism as Secular Religion.
Supervisor: Katherine Young

Karl McDaniel
Topic: Motive for the Matthean Mission: Isaiah's Influence on the Great Commission.
Supervisors: Ian Henderson, Ellen Aitken

Todd Statham
Topic: Theories of Doctrinal Development in Victorian Scottish Theology.
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow

M.A.

William Affleck (Bioethics concentration)
Topic: Oh Father Where Art Thou: Giving a Voice to the Father in Bereavement Research.
Supervisor: Gaelle Fiasse

Darry Dinnell
Topic: Samrajyalaksmitpithika: A South Indian Manual for the Tantric King.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Danielle Duperreault
Topic: Memoirs of a Nation of Pleasure: Prophetic Variations on the Theme of Covenant as Marriage.
Supervisor: Patricia Kirkpatrick

Eric Farr
Topic: The narrative and discursive references to children and audience duality in The Gospel of Mark.
Supervisor: Ian Henderson

Luke Sommers
Topic: The Ideal Patriarchy Threatened in Pre-Monarchic Israel.
Supervisor: Patricia Kirkpatrick

Aleana Young
Topic: What has Lyons to do with Rome?
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Elena Young
Topic: Nationalism and the Appropriation of Rime Identity in the Tibetan Diaspora.
Supervisor: Lara Braitstein

Ph.D.

David Jacob Koloszyc
Topic: Religion, atheism, and the crisis of meaning in Julia Kristeva's critique of modernity.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Aimee Patterson
Topic: The ends of medicine at the end of life: understanding the ordinary-extraordinary means distinction in an age of pervasive technology.
Supervisors: Katherine Young, Gaelle Fiasse

Carla Sulzbach
Topic: From here to eternity and back: locating sacred spaces and temple imagery in the Book of Daniel.
Supervisor: Gerbern Oegema

M.A.

Alnis Dickson
Topic: Organizing religion: situating the three-vow texts of the Tibetan Buddhist renaissance.
Supervisor: Lara Braitstein

Pierre-Andre Duchemin
Topic: Bonhoeffer's concept of the weakness of God and religionless Christianity in a world come of age.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Marissa Figlarz
Topic: A song to "The beautiful Goddess": Text, ritual, and devotion in the «Apirami Antati».
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Philip Harwood
Topic: Civil marriage commissioners in the province of Saskatchewan: religious freedom and public service.
Supervisor: Daniel Cere

David Lemarquand
Topic: The Function of King David in the Deuteronomistic History.
Supervisor: Patricia Kirkpatrick

Madison Robins
Topic: “And I Will Surely Hide My Face:” Pseudo-writing in LXX Esther and Second Maccabees.
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken, Ian Henderson

Jennifer Otto
Topic: Reason, revelation and ridicule: assessing the criteria for authoritative allegorical interpretations in Philo and Augustine.
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken, Torrance Kirby

Jenna Preston (Bioethics concentration )
Topic: Adequate Protection of Conscience?
Supervisor: Katherine Young

Ryan Scruggs
Topic: Faith seeking understanding: Thomas Merton's interest in Karl Barth.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Ph.D.

Melissa Curley
Topic: "Know that we are not good persons": Pure Land Buddhism and the ethics of exile.
Supervisor: G. Victor Hori

Adrian Langdon
Topic: God the eternal contemporary: Trinity, eternity and time in Karl Barth's «Church Dogmatics».
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow

Nathan Robert Loewen
Topic: Rethinking evil with Jacques Derrida.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Harold Penner
Topic: Meaning, mystery, method and mystagogy according to Reinhold Niebuhr.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Ph.D.

Mike Arcieri
Topic: The text of Didymus the blind in the Book of Acts, the Catholic Epistles and the Apocalypse.
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken

Bilal Bas
Topic: Ecclesiastical politics during the Iconoclastic controversy (726-843): the impact of Eusebian "imperial theology" on the justification of imperial policies.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Jennifer Mary Davis
Topic: Religious experience and symbols of presence amongst the people of Eastern James Bay.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Paolo De Petris
Topic: Calvin's "Theodicy" in his «Sermons on Job» and the hiddenness of God.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Scott Halse
Topic: Functional specialization and religious diversity: Bernard Lonergan's methodology and the philosophy of religion.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Stanley Maclean
Topic: The eschatological orientation in the early theology of Thomas F. Torrance, 1939-1963.
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow

Derek Bianchi Melchin
Topic: Insight, learning, and dialogue in the transformation of religious conflict: applications from the work of Bernard Lonergan.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Roland James De Vries
Topic: Toward a theological ethics of sexual difference: Luce Irigaray and Søren Kierkegaard on mediation and intersubjectivity between man and woman.
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow

M.A.

Mohini Datta-Ray
Topic: Monumentalizing Tantra: the multiple identities of the Hamsesvari Devi temple and the Bansberia zamindari.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Victoria Gross
Topic: Reconstructing Tamil masculinities: «Kavati» and «Viratam» among Sri Lankan men in Montréal.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Katherine Narraway
Topic: Empty ethics: Bodhisattva ethics in Nishitani Keiji's Religion and Nothingness.
Supervisor: G. Victor Hori

Tomasz Pokinko
Topic: Strategies for justifying violence in societal self-defense in Indian lay Jainism: a textual and ethnographic study.
Supervisor: Katherine Young

Jordan Prokopy (Bioethics Concentration)
Topic: The interface of medicine, spirituality and ethics: a case study of the McGill programs in whole person care.
Supervisor: Katherine Young

Erin Reid
Topic: Needling the spirit: an investigation of the perception and uses of the term «Qi» by acupuncturists in Québec.
Supervisor: Robin Yates, Katherine Young

Aaron Ricker
Topic: Foreign tyrants: Greco-Roman Jewish epideictic rhetoric in Mark 10:42-43a.
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken

Amanda Rosini
Topic: Sacrifice and Genesis 22: literal polemic or literary construct.
Supervisor: Patricia Kirkpatrick

Thomas Troughton
Topic: Tibetan mind training: tradition and genre.
Supervisor: Thupten Jinpa, Lara Braitstein

Ph.D.

David Alan
Topic: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also": narrative, ethics and possessions in Luke-Acts.
Supervisor: Frederik Wisse

Rachel Helen Reesor
Topic: Anselm's Cur Deus Homo for a peace theology: on the compatibility of non-violence and sacrificial atonement.
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow

Anthony Kappeler
Topic: Communication habits for the pilgrim church: Vatican teaching on media and social communication.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Michael John Storch
Topic: Applied imagination: Giordano Bruno and the creation of magical images.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Richard Russell Walker
Topic: Rethinking the 'Religion of Technology' Thesis.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

M.A.

Ranganathan Balasubramanian
Topic: The «Tirukkalirruppatiyar»: Transition from «Bhakti» to Caiva Cittantam Philosophy.
Supervisor: Katherine Young

Lisa Gilbert
Topic: To have authority over a body: 1 Corinthians 7:3-4 and the conjugal debt.
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken, Torrance Kirby

Eliza Rosenburg
Topic: The representation and role of demon possession in Mark.
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken

Ph.D.

Cezar Enia
Topic: Job - la souffrance et le mal dans sa relation au divin selon Carl Gustav Jung.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

David Glenn Guretzki
Topic: The genesis and systematic function of the filioque in Karl Barth's «Church Dogmatics».
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow

James Mark Shields
Topic: Critical Buddhism: a Buddhist hermeneutics of practice.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Zuidema Jason Nathanael
Topic: Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) and the outward instruments of divine grace.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

M.A.

Phillipe Angers
Topic: Principles of religious imitation in mediaeval architecture: an analysis of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and its European copies from the Carolingian period to the late Romanesque.
Supervisor: Joseph McLelland

Bonnie de Bruijn
Topic: Female subjectivity and religion according to Julia Kristeva.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Joshua Justin Collins
Topic: The concept of love in Saint Augustine's Confessions.
Supervisor: Gaelle Fiasse, Torrance Kirby

Nicholas Marc Dion
Topic: Worshipping the dark: the manifestations of Carl Gustav Jung's archetype of the shadow in contemporary Wicca.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Nicole Marie Hildebrand
Topic: The language of creation and the construction of a new concept of theodicy: Job 38-42.
Supervisor: Patricia Kirkpatrick

Octavian Lucian Jarnea
Topic: «Les Faictz de Jesus Christ et du Pape»: the polemics of French reform before Calvin.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Shital Sharma
Topic: Restoring ananda: philosophy, aesthetic experience and ritual in Pustimarga Vaisnavism.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Jonathan Sozek
Topic: After rationalism: the moral and religious implications of Taylor's and Rorty's epistemological critiques.
Supervisor: Lisa Sideris

Meredith Joan Warren
Topic: "Like dew from heaven:" honeycomb, religous identity, and transformation in «Joseph and Aseneth».
Supervisor: Ellen Aitken

Ph.D.

Philip Laurence Tite
Topic: Valentinian ethics and paraenetic discourse: determining the social function of moral exhortation in Valentinian Christianity.
Supervisor: Frederik Wisse, Ian Henderson

Lara E. Braitstein
Topic: Saraha's adamantine songs: texts, contexts, translations and traditions of the great seal.
Supervisor: Thupten Langri, Richard Hayes

M.A.

Christopher Byrne
Topic: The moon is not the moon: non-transcendence in the poetry of Han-shan and Ryokan.
Supervisor: G. Victor Hori

Mark William Henderson
Topic: God, world and humanity: an investigation in the work of Gordon D. Kaufman.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Sajida Jalalzai
Topic: The politics of recovery: women in the Tablighi Jama'at and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Meera Jo Kachroo
Topic: The Goddess and Her powers: the tantric identities of the Saundarya Lahari.
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Shem Miller
Topic: The angel story: a study of the interpretation of Genesis 6: 1-4 in the Jewish literature of the Second Temple period.
Supervisor: Gerbern Oegema

Preeti Parasharami
Topic: Writing from the inside: domesticity and transcendence in the works of Bahina Bai (c.1628-1700).
Supervisor: Davesh Soneji

Sara Parks
Topic: The role of women in 1 and 2 Maccabees.
Supervisor: Gerbern Oegema

Aimee Patterson
Topic: Theocentric ethics for a secular world: toward a general application of the ethical thought of James M. Gustafson.
Supervisor: Lisa Sideris

Erin Marie Rehel (Bioethics Concentration)
Topic: Female genital cutting in the context of Islamic bioethics.
Supervisor: Lisa Sideris, Robert Crouch

Varant Arslanian
Topic: Leaving home, staying home: a case study of an American Zen monastery.
Supervisor: G. Victor Hori

Ph.D.

Louise Johnston
Topic: The covenant chain of peace: metaphor and religious thought in seventeenth century Haudenosaunee Council Oratory.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Mary Louise Mitchell
Topic: A reading of the imagery of Lamentations.
Supervisor: Robert Culley

M.A.

Stephen Grahame Backhouse
Topic: Completing the vision: Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonymous texts and the attack upon Christendom.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Andrew Noel Blakeslee
Topic: Religion and science in the philosophy fo David Ray Griffin: a process approach to integration.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Cory Labrecque (Bioethics Concentration)
Topic: Transcending the functional self: a discourse on the continuity of personhood in degenerative dementia.
Supervisor: Leigh Turner, Gregory Baum

Catherine Lejtenyi
Topic: Speaking shadows: human and divine possibility in the poetry of Paul Celan.
Supervisor: B. Barry Levy

Andrea Dawn Lobel
Topic: The green ears of Xanthicus: calendrical interpretations of Exodus 12:1-2 in Jewish and sectarian sources from the Biblical through medieval periods.
Supervisor: B. Barry Levy

Kevin Vance Macdonald
Topic: The text of Paul in the writings of Didymus of Alexandria.
Supervisor: Frederik Wisse

Joseph Daniel Markowski,
Topic: Carry water, lug firewood: Dogen's dialectical standpoint on "dropping off body and mind".
Supervisor: G. Victor Hori

Darrin Douglas Mortson
Topic: Neither nihilism nor absolutism: on comparing the middle paths of Nagarjuna and Derrida.
Supervisor: Richard Hayes

John Andrew Siwiec
Topic: Philosophy of religion as hermeneutics of contemplation according to Dewi Z. Phillips.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Rebecca Whitt Warrick (Bioethics Concentration)
Topic: Universal codes of ethics for medical research with human subjects: insights from the community orientation of the Zulu and Kikuyu.
Supervisor: Leigh Turner

Thomas Seniw
Topic: Plotinus: The Term and the Way - theory of art and beauty.
Supervisor: Joseph McLelland

Ph.D.

Martin Theodor Adam
Topic: Meditation and the concept of insight in Kamalasila's Bhavanakramas.
Supervisor: Richard Hayes

Toru Asakawa
Topic: Kitamori Kazo: theologian of the pain of God.
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow

Norman Cornett
Topic: The role of religion in Lionel Groulx's religious nationalist thought.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Gary Allen Gaudin
Topic: Hope becomes command: Emil L. Fackenheim's "Destructive Recovery" of hope in the post-Shao Jewish theology and its implications for Jewish-Christian dialogue.
Supervisor: Douglas Hall

Ali Mesbah
Topic: Religion, rationality, and langueage: a critical analysis of Jurgen Habermas' theory of communicative action.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

James Colin O’Rourke
Topic: God, Saint, and Priest: a comparison of mediatory modes in Roman Catholicism and Srivaisnavism with special reference to the Council of Trent and the «Yatindramatadipika».
Supervisor: Katherine Young, Torrance Kirby

Vanessa Rebecca Sasson
Topic: Telling birth stories: a comparative analysis of the birth stories of Moses and the Buddha.
Supervisor: B. Barry Levy, Richard Hayes

M.A.

Natalia Abraham
Topic: Ayurveda and religion in Canada: a critical look at new age Ayurveda from the Indian diaspora perspective.
Supervisor: Katherine Young

Kathleen Austin (Bioethics Concentration)
Topic: Aristotle, Aquinas and the history of quickening.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby, Marguerite Deslauriers

Nader Awad
Topic: The trumpet's blast: the political theology of John Knox.
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby

Amelinda Berube
Topic: Tragedy in the Gospel of Mark.
Supervisor: Ian Henderson

Stephen Peter Casimir
Topic: A critical review of characterization in the Fourth Gospel's structure of anonymous disciple allusions.
Supervisor: Ian Henderson

Melissa Curley
Topic: Surface tension: Kuki Shuzo's «iki» as a posture of resignation and resistance.
Supervisor: G. Victor Hori

Laurie Bonnie Lamoureux Scholes
Topic: The social authority of religion in Canada: a study of contemporary death rituals.
Supervisor: Katherine Young

Christine Fillion
Topic: The role of scriptural testimony, reason and spiritual practice in the Upadesasahasri: a non-commentarial work of Sankara.
Supervisor: Richard Hayes

Simon Leblanc
Topic: Le Deutéronome, la famille et la transmission de la Loi en Israël ancien.
Supervisor: Patricia Kirkpatrick

Erica Sutton (Bioethics Concentration)
Topic: Prenatal testing and informed choice: the need for improved communication and understanding between health care professionals and pregnant women.
Supervisor: Leigh Turner

Sharon Harvey
Topic: Caputo on Heidegger and ethics.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Maureen Robin Jones
Topic: Issues in the thought of Paul Tillich: the quest for truth, meaning and certainty.
Supervisor: Maurice Boutin

Mayyada Kheir
Topic: Les (in)tolérances de l'abbé Grégoire.
Supervisor: W.J. Torrance Kirby, John W. Hellman

Marcel Parent
Topic: Is comparative philosophy postmodern?
Supervisor: Richard P. Hayes