Librarian awarded fellowship to explore the role of Sunday schools in spreading literacy

Associate Librarian of Humanities and Religion, Scott McLaren, has been awarded a prestigious Botein Fellowship by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS). McLaren will spend the month of November at the AAS in Worcester Massachusetts extending research he began in his dissertation on early Upper Canadian religious print culture. Specifically, McLaren wants to deepen his understanding of […]

Psychology Professor Ian McGregor explores links between anxiety and compensatory convictions

Research sheds light on human belief in Friday the 13th, Bigfoot, fate, heaven and hell It was during this week, in the lead-up to today’s supernaturally inclined date of Friday the 13th, that I learned the similarity between believing in Bigfoot and believing in The One, wrote columnist Micah Toub in The Globe and Mail […]

Professor Haideh Moghissi's 1999 book on feminism and Islam finds new readers in Indonesia

About five years ago, Haideh Moghissi heard of plans to translate into Indonesian her 1999 book, Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism: The Limits of Postmodern Analysis. She didn’t hear anything more until two months ago when, lo and behold, she learned it had not only been translated, it had been published. Slowly, over the past 12 […]

Professor Stephanie Martin's canticle settings sung by University of Cambridge choir

With the rich monastic history of some of England’s universities, the tradition of choral evensong still thrives, creating a thirst for new settings for the canticles. As Canada is not steeped in the same rituals, few Canadians take this work on, making York music Professor Stephanie Martin the exception. She composed a new setting of the […]

CERLAC sponsors lecture on Caribbean women's religious dress March 10

Religion and culture Professor Carol Duncan of Wilfrid Laurier University will explore Caribbean women’s religious dress traditions at the next instalment of the Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean’s (CERLAC) Caribbean Lecture Series. “Caribbean Religion and Female Esthetic” will take place Thursday, March 10, from 12:30 to 2:30pm in the Conference Centre […]

Professor Zulfikar Hirji publishes book exploring Muslim diversity

For more than 1,400 years, Muslims have held multiple and diverging views about their religious tradition. Yet especially since Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims are commonly portrayed as homogeneous and dogmatic. In his new book, Diversity and Pluralism in Islam: Historical and Contemporary Discourses amongst Muslims, York anthropologist Zulfikar Hirji challenges that view. The 253-page volume […]

Faculty of Education to host Canadian History of Education conference Oct. 21 to 24

York University’s Faculty of Education will host more than 100 leading thinkers in education from across Canada and around the world at the 16th Biennial Conference of the Canadian History of Education Association (CHEA). The conference, “Education in Tough Times: Tough Times in Education,” from Oct. 21 to 24 at the Novotel Hotel (North York), […]

York researchers find anxiety may be at root of religious extremism

Anxiety and uncertainty can cause us to become more idealistic and radical in our religious beliefs, according to new findings by York University researchers published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In a series of studies, more than 600 participants were placed in anxiety-provoking or neutral situations and then asked […]

York Centre for Asian Research awards six graduate scholarships to fuel innovative research projects

Six York students have won five awards for their research on Asia or Asian diaspora this year from the York Centre for Asian Research (YCAR). Vanessa Lamb (right), a second-year doctoral candidate in geography, is the 2010 Vivienne Poy Asian Research Award recipient. Her research interests include the politics of the environment and development, feminist political ecology […]