Student Profiles

Stacy Allison
Stacy holds a Honours B.Mus. in French horn performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, a M.Mus. from Duquesne University, and a M.I.St. from the University of Toronto. She is interested in popular music and culture, in particular how the ideas of love and sex work on and through music. Stacy is also a professional librarian and music cataloguer at York. Her website is available at: www.yorku.ca/sacassin.

Neil Balan
Neil holds a B.A. (Hons.) Cinema Studies, University of Toronto, along with an M.A. Media Studies, Concordia University. Neil is currently completing his dissertation, The New Military Intelligence: On the Human Turn in Military Affairs and the Displacements of Culture. The dissertation traces the relations between Canada's expeditionary war in Afghanistan, biopower, 'fast' and 'slow' political violence, and the human turn in contemporary military affairs. The project makes evident the multi-directional exchange between military and non-military zones of production, and ultimately argues that military counterinsurgency doctrine is one part of a wider ‘culture of counterinsurgency’ in Western neoliberal societies. Neil's academic interests include cultural and communication theory, the experimental humanities, war studies, and military affairs. Currently living in Saskatoon, Neil teaches communications as a sessional lecturer at the Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, and at St. Peter’s College in Muenster. nbalan@yorku.ca.

Robert Beghetto
Robert holds a B.A. (Hons) in History and a minor in Religious Studies, along with a MA in Humanities from York University.  His research interests include modernist and post-modernist literature, philosophy, and film, as well as the social and political effects of both World Wars.  His dissertation will focus on modernity, primarily the city and WWI, and how they relate to the 'modern outsider'. 

Michael Bernofsky
Michael Bernofsky holds a BA, specialized Honors, in Religious Studies (York University), a certificate in Biblical Studies (York University) and a diploma in Film and Television Production (Humber College). His research interest is in exegesis of the Hebrew Bible with a focus on the Penteteuch. His masters work will examine the understandings and misinterpretations of female Biblical characters in religious and popular culture. mbern@yorku.ca

Bill Blackstock
Bill Blackstock PhDIII
Interests are Critical Theory, French philosophy, Cultural Studies/Cultural Politics.

Jordana de Bloeme
Jordana holds a B.A. in History and Religious Studies from York University and an M.A. in History from the University of Toronto. Her research interests include modern Eastern European Jewish cultural history and Yiddish language and culture. Her dissertation focuses on the creation of a “Yiddishist” youth culture and identity in interwar Poland.

Robert M.W. Brown
Robert holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Carleton University and an M.A. in Environmental Studies from York University.  His current research interests include the intersection between modernity and nature in the works of F.W.J. Schelling and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the methodological development of the eco-critical humanities. rmwbrown@yorku.ca

Mark Celinscak
Mark holds a B.Ed. from Brock University and an M.A. in History from the University of Toronto. His work examines how modernism, modernity and war intersect. His ongoing research explores the relationship between various forms of representation and topics concerning the Second World War. celinsca@yorku.ca

Justin Derry
Justin holds a B.E.S in Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo and an M.A in Humanities from York University.  His research interests include: Biopolitics, biophilosophy, and post-humanist and post-structuralist theory in the context of cultural and political theories of community and Canadian multiculturalism.
jederry@yorku.ca

Kathryn Franklin
Kathryn holds a BA in English Literature (McGill), an MA in Humanities (York) and a MiST (Toronto) in Information Studies. Areas of interest include archival research, writers in exile, youth culture and photography. Her current research focuses on the Weimar Republic, Fashion and Glam Rock. She is a co-editor of Descant Magazine and guest-edited Descant 150, Writers in Prison in Fall 2010.

Bessie Goldberg
Bessie’s dissertation, “Essays in Aesthetic Judgment: The Case of Mansfield Park,” examines Jane Austen’s challenging novel in order to clarify the relationship between aesthetic judgments which characters make in novels and aesthetic judgments which readers make about novels. She holds an M.A. in Humanities from York University. In her MRP, “How (the) ‘I’ got into Language” she explored the subject’s entrance into language from the perspectives of linguistics, critical theory, and literature. For her B.A. in English from Reed College, she completed a thesis titled “Language in Borges, Borges in Language.” Bessie’s research interests include literary theory, aesthetics, and narratology.

Shlomo Gleibman
Serhiy holds an honours BA in Philology, Russian Language and Literature and World Literature from Ivan Franko National University (Lviv, Ukraine) and an MA in Humanities from York University where his major research paper was on the Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) in rabbinic and early Christian literature. He also studied at the Open University of Israel (Tel Aviv) and at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York). His research interests include translation and interpretation of religious texts in Jewish and Christian traditions, as well as relationship between religion, ethics, and identity.

Denise Handlarski
Denise Handlarski is pursuing a Masters in Humanities with the graduate diploma in Jewish studies as part of the requirements for training as a Rabbi in the Humanistic Jewish movement. She recently earned a PhD from York in English in postcolonial literature and theory. Her current work investigates intersections
between postcolonial concepts/identities and Jewish ones.

Deborah Herman
Debra earned her Hon. B.A. and M.A. in English at York University. Her research interests include the Classical Tradition and the theme of metamorphosis in literature. Her dissertation will focus on the adaptation of the Beauty and the Beast story in Western literature from Ovid to the present.

Candace Iron
Candace holds an Honours BA in Art History and Visual Arts from the University of Windsor and a Master's in Art History from York University. Her PhD Research examines 19th-century Canadian ecclesiastical architecture and its value as a social text. Her PhD dissertation will research the Canadian-born architect Henry Langley (1836-1907), the most prolific architect of 19th-century Ontario, and his designs for churches, while paying specific attention to their reflection of social, religious and architectural movements.

Irfaan Jaffer
Irfaan graduated with a BA honors from York University in Humanities/Philosophy. After completing my BA I went to the University of Toronto where I received my MA from the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations department. I am now doing my doctorate in Humanities at York. My research primarily focuses on Shia Islam and Human rights in relation to Shi'i theology, historiography, law, ethics and modernity. 

Hannah Jocelyn
Hannah Jocelyn holds a B.A. (Hons.) from Concordia University in English Literature. Her interests include contemporary women's fiction and North American history. Her future studies will concentrate on the dynamic between Canadian and American contemporary female authors. 

Matthew Kaufman
Matthew earned his B.A. from Lawrence University in 1989, and his M.H.L. and rabbinic ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1998. Matthew finished his M.A. in Humanities at York University in 2009. His MRP is entitled The Menorah Journal from 1915-1929 and Shaping American Jewish Identity: Culture, Race, and Evolutionary Sociology. Matthew is currently working on the engagement of science and religion, with particular attention paid to the Victorian era and the Jewish community.

Tehmina Khan
Tehmina has an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Pakistan. She taught English for several years in her native country to high school students and prepared them for the Cambridge GCE O-Level examinations. As a New Canadian she decided to go back to university and recently graduated with a BA Honors in English and a TESOL certificate from York University. She also taught English to non-native speakers at COSTI Immigrant Services. She is interested in using Cultural Studies as a lens to analyze the works of South Asian writers to explore the impact of extremism on gender and female identity.

Damon Lindler Lazzara
Damon earned an honours BA in Media Studies from Goucher College with a thesis on metanarrative in radio journalism. He then completed Master's work in Humanities and English at the University of South Florida while working as an assistant producer for WUSF-FM and as the tenor soloist for the Mendelssohn Choir of Tampa Bay. In 2006 he began doctoral studies on the intersection of poetry, adolescence, myth, and modernity. He has published, presented, and performed in academic, professional, and creative capacities, most recently contributing to the upcoming collection of essays, "LGBT Identity and Online New Media."

Jessica Lee
Jessica J. Lee completed a combined honours degree in Contemporary Studies and International Development at the University of King's College in 2008. Since then, she has been living in London, England, where she completed an MRes in Humanities at The London Consortium/Birkbeck, while also pursuing work in the charity sector. Her dissertation was published in Contemporary Aesthetics in 2010. Jessica has presented at conferences including the Nordic Society of Aesthetics and the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics, and has led workshops for the Royal Academy of the Arts and Slow Down London. Her research focusses on environmental aesthetics, the role of aesthetics in domestic life, and on conceptions of nature within ecology and aesthetics.

Catherine Legault
Catherine holds a diploma in Business Administration from Sir Sandford Fleming College, an Honours B.A. in English and Cultural Studies from Trent University and a M.A. in Humanities from York University. She has an extensive background working with youth in educational, social and religious programmes. Her research focuses on Muslim youth culture and identity in Canada.

Kyah Lloyd
Kyah holds a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Victoria and an M.A. in Humanities from York University. His research interests include the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille and cultural theory.

Reva Marin
Reva holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies from York University; her thesis was a study of African American musicians Nina Simone and Abbey Lincoln and their expressions of engagement with the civil rights movement. She has written a young adult biography of jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, published by Groundwood Books in 2003.

Brian McCormack
Brian holds a BA in Philosophy and Sociology from St. Thomas University, and an MES in Environmental Studies from York University. His current research looks at the work of the biologist Jacob von Uexküll.
brianmc@yorku.ca

Brandon Moores
Brandon Moores is now in his fourth year of studies in the PhD Humanities program at York.  He is a native of Montreal and received his BA from Concordia University, with a Major in Western Civilization and Society and a Joint Honours in English Literature and Creative Writing.  Following up on this last, he did an MA in Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick, where he produced a new translation of eighty-eight of the Latin poet Martial's epigrams.  This has led in turn to his current project, a study of how humour is translated. Other interests include historical linguistics, Ancient Rome and Roman literature, and poetics and stylistics.

John Morden
John earned his honours B.A. from the University of Toronto in Art and Art History and his M.A. from Interdisciplinary Studies at York University. John is currently researching the 19th-century freak, to determine how they used Victorian science, photo-technology and aesthetic theory to construct profitable public personas.

Tanita Muneshwar
Tanita holds a B.A. in English and Caribbean Studies and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies both from York University.  Her MA thesis explored how identity is constructed in the novels of contemporary Indo-Guyanese women through themes of education, ethnicity and gender negotiations.  Her research interests include religion and landscape in Caribbean and Latin American literature. 

Khyati Nagar
Khyati is in the second year of the PhD program. She holds a BA in Fine Arts from the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, India, an MDes in Visual communication Design from IIT Bombay, India, and an MA in Humanities Computing from the University of Alberta. Her current research focuses on the global circulation of knowledge and the intersections of botany, print culture, colonialism and art in the 19th century. Khyati is also a professional graphic designer and educator and in the past has designed visual identities for The Canadian Association of Cultural Studies, Royal Society of Canada Conferences and taught undergraduate design students at the Department of Design, IIT, Guwahati, India.

Susan Niazi

Susan is a first year PhD student in Humanities Program. She has a B.A. in English Language Translation from Allame Tabatabaii University in Tehran, Iran in 1997. She is a Literary Translator and has gained translation experience over the past ten years. As a Literary Translator she has built up her professional portfolio by translating a collection of short stories, novels, and literary articles from English into Persian (Farsi) and vice versa, some of which have already been published in her home country. She is also a certified Community Interpreter, and obtained an ILSAT Certificate (Interpreter Language and Skills Assessment Tool). She considers herself bilingual in Persian/English. She completed her M.A. in Translation Studies at York University, Glendon College in 2010. As a Literary Translator who has practiced translation in both directions between two languages, cultures and literatures, she believes in the intercultural communicative role of literary translation in developing, and reshaping cultures and literatures. This has led her to her research project, that being how literary translation has influenced, and enriched the Persian literary polysystem at the onset of the era of Modernism in Iran.    

Other interests: Translation studies, translation and identity, comparative literature, the history of literary translation after the post Islamic Revolution in Iran, theories of world literature and the position of translated literature within it.

Martin Parrot
'Martin has a MA from l’École d’Études Politiques de l’Université d’Ottawa where he wrote a thesis entitled 'L'Ébranlement de l'écrit: mouvement de l'existence, littérature, et geste politique dans la philosophie de Jan Patocka'. He also has a MA in Humanities from York University where he developed a critical appreciation of Frances A. Yates’s approach to the study of Hermeticism from the perspective of cultural history. Still at York for the PhD, his research has two main orientations. The first is the cultural history of magic and witchcraft in colonial North America with a particular focus on practices, texts, and beliefs. The second is the study of expression, imagination, and epistemology in 20th century French history and philosophy.' mparro81@yorku.ca

Concetta Principe
Concetta's (HBA Trent U., MA Concordia U, MA York) primary research interests are centered on the political aspects of twentieth-century experimental creative works (literature and film) and current philosophical/ theoretical approaches in cultural and political analysis, with a special focus on reading traumas of religious, race and/or gender oppression in our secularist age. She has two publications to her credit, a collection of prose poems and a novella, and has most recently directed and written documentaries for television.

Sonja Pushchak
Sonja holds a B.A. from the University of Toronto in Art and Art History and has undertaken her M.A. at York University in Interdisciplinary Studies. Her research to date has been the social and cultural implications of the Darwinist circle and the possibility that suffering may have been a pretence by which the group demonstrated their right to the most prestigious positions in late 19th-century science.

Maureen Riche
Maureen holds a B.A. in English Literature from Memorial University and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Laurentian University. Between degrees, Maureen worked for 15 years as a marketing and communications writer, editor and creative director. Her main interest is the role of the animal in indigenous knowledge systems, and she is currently researching stories indigenous people tell about dogs--from dog-husband myths to canine characters in contemporary Native fiction. Among Mo's recently completed work is an article on dogs in the novels of Ojibwe writer Louise Erdrich. Her article on contemporary animal control programs in indigenous communities is slated for publication in an upcoming volume from Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Kathryn Roberts
After a lengthly career in financial services, Kathryn returned to school to receive an MA in Humanities from York University. Her MRP was entitled "Reflections of Hume in Dickens" and is consistent with her ongoing interest in
the ways in which Victorian literary figures assimilated modern epistemologies of personal identity.

Arun Nedra Rodrigo
Arun’s dissertation “The Sum of all our Solitudes” examines the role political refugees play in our imaginings of multiculturalism, their presence/absences, and possible repairs to both current practice and legislation through the recognition of multiculturalism as a moral endeavor.

Jason Rothery
Jason holds a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Returning to academia after a long sojourn through the world of professional theatre, he intends to focus his studies on the history of public memory: mythology, oral folk and fairy tales; the role, function and purpose of populist narratives as expressed and retold through contemporary mediums, and the potential consequences of the dissolution and/or degradation of core narratives in modernist cultures and societies.

Christina Rousseau
Christina holds a BA in History and English Literature as well as an MA in Interdisciplinary Humanities, both from Laurentian University. Her current research interests are focused around women and labor, as well as Italian feminism.

Sharanpal Ruprai
She has completed a Masters degree in English, from the University of Calgary. She graduated from the University of Winnipeg with a Bachelor of Arts (Hon) and a Bachelor of Education. She taught middle school in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is a published poet; her work has been included in two anthologies, Exposed and Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Canadian Women Poets.

Megan Sandhu
Megan holds a BA in English/Film as well as an MA in English from the University of Western Ontario. She also holds a Certificate in Creative Writing, from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on representations of homelessness, both fictional and autobiographical in different media, as well as cinematic propaganda and advocacy. Her future dissertation title will be: "Representations of Homelessness: Negotiating Identities through
the Mediation of Lived Experience". Megan is currently enrolled in a diploma program in Refugee and migration studies and conducts research on autobiographical and documentary representations of Refugee experience in Ontario suburbs.

Yael Seliger
Yael Seliger holds an honours BA and MA in History and Political Theory from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem as well as an Med from the University of Toronto (OISE). Her general academic interest is in ways in which literary expressions reflect cultural, national, linguistic and social issues. Specifically, Yael's research focuses on post-modern trends in Hebrew literature within the context of major historic developments.

Gurbir Jolly Singh
Gurbir’s M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies (York University) drew broadly from diasporic studies, literary studies, and feminist ethnographic writing to explore contemporary literature written by “second-generation” South Asian writers in Canada and the United States. He has co-edited two literary anthologies: Bolo! Bolo! Second Generation South Asian Voices (SAPNA, 2000) and Desilicious: Sexy. Subversive. South Asian (Arsenal Pulp, 2003). He has also co-edited Once Upon A Time in Bollywood: The Global Swing in Hindi Cinema (TSAR, 2007), which addresses globalization and postcolonial pop culture. His dissertation, tentatively titled “Postcolonial Transfigurations of the Christ,” draws on classical Christological debates and current postcolonial theory to examine Christ figures in English postcolonial literature.

Val Strawczynski
Val earned a BA, specialised honours, in Religious Studies and an MA in History at York University. Her interest is in the interconnection between cultures in the ancient world, looking beyond, behind, but especially inside the texts, in order to understand the intercultural context of everything that's been written. Her Master's thesis addressed the pragmatic theology of the Achaemenid Persian kings from Cyrus to Darius II, focusing on their expedient support of cults in Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, and the Levant between 559 and 405 BCE. Her doctoral dissertation will concern the politics of assassination in the Hebrew Bible, addressing such questions as the reason for and goal of assassination, the situation leading to the event, and exactly how the term might have been defined in the ancient Levant prior to Graeco-Roman times.

Joshua Synenko
Joshua Synenko is writing a dissertation entitled "The Aftermath of Tradition: Memory, Space and the Idea of a University." 

William J. Urban
William holds a BA in Economics (St. John Fisher College), an MA in Economics (University of Toronto) and an MA in Humanities (York University). His research interests include psychoanalysis, contemporary French philosophy, German idealism and mathematics, the purest of the sciences. He is currently exploring Žižek's development of Lacan's non-hermeneutical phenomenology as a radical approach to textual engagement and has recently been inspired by Badiou's ontological use of axiomatic set theory. Advancing an understanding of the psychoanalytic subject (cogito) remains his central theoretical concern.

Andrea C Valente
Andrea holds a BA in English (Hons.) and a MA in Applied Linguistics from Brazil. She has also completed some credit courses in Communication at Malmo University, Sweden. Her research interests fall within the fields of cultural studies, discourse analyses, literary and film studies, multiculturalism and ethnicity, Jewish immigration and identity. For the MRP, she intends to discuss the presence of ethnic film festivals in urban spaces, with particular attention to the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. She is interested in exploring the role of such festival to its own community and Canadian society.

Tanhum Yoreh
Tanhum holds a B.A in Environmental Studies from McGill University and an M.A. in Geography specializing in Environmental Management, Planning and Policy from Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has worked and volunteered extensively in the environmental movement, and hosted and produced the award winning radio show Green Groove in Israel for three years. His current research focuses on the theory and practice of Jewish environmental thought.
yoreh@yorku.ca

Ivan Zhavoronkov
Ivan holds a Master's in Humanities from York University, as well as an Immigration Practitioner Certificate Program from Seneca College. He also holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English and French Philology from V.I.Vernadsky Taurida National University in Urkaine. His interests focus on Nietzsche's philosophy and language. His MA project was entitled “Symbolism in F.Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra”, as well as English, Russian and French Translations from the original German of Nietzsche’s works. He plans to continue exploring Symbolism in Nietzsche's work in the above translations from the German.
1. A published poet (both Russian and English);
2. A poetic translator (English/Russian and Russian/English);
3. A member of the Interregional Union of Writers, Russia.
4. A Corresponding-Member of the Derzhavin Academy of Russian Literature and Fine Arts (based in St. Petersburg, Russia)