Gillian McCann
Associate Professor

Dr. Gillian McCann

She/her/hers

Biography

I attempt to be an engaged scholar and as a result the courses I teach at Nipissing reflect my interests and outside commitments. Courses such as Greening Religion, Health, Healing and Religion and, Women in World Religions, are part of my engagement in writing and teaching about Utopian social thought, the intersection of east and west, gender and the environment. My current research examines the impact of the loss of religion on contemporary culture.

As a teacher I believe that students and professors are part of a larger community of scholars and so together are involved with expanding the field of religious studies and linking it to the world beyond the academy.

Positions

Full-time Faculty
Faculty of Arts and Science - Social and Cultural Studies - Sociology

Education

PhD, Religious Studies, University of Toronto
2003
MA, South Asian and Religious Studies, University of Toronto
1995
BA, English and South Asian Studies, University of Toronto
1991
Areas of specialization
Religion and Modernity
Health
Healing and Religion
Hospice and Palliative Care

Teaching Areas

Undergraduate Programs

  • Sociology

Research

Research Interests

The intersection between religion, spirituality and contemporary culture.

Open to Media Inquiries

Publications

Health and Healing in World Religions, Gillian McCann, Routledge, 2025, "Yoga and Alignment: From the Upanishads to BKS Iyengar, Gillian McCann and Gitte Bechsgaard, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2021 " Religion in Exile: What it Really Means to Lose our Religion, Gillian McCann and Gitte Bechsgaard, Palgrave MacMillan, 2017, "Vanguard of the New Age: The Toronto Theosophical Society from 1891-1945", Gillian McCann, McGill-Queen's, 2012

Performing Gender, Class and Nation: Rukmini Devi Arundale and the Impact of Kalakshetra, "South Asia Research", October 21, 2019, Emerging Representations of the East: The Role of Theosophical Periodicals 1879-1900" in "The Early Theosophical Society and the East" Oxford University Press, 2020., The Pilgrimage to Auschwitz: Making Meaning in Later Modernity, in " The Future of Humanity," Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, The Whole World Opened Up: Women in Canadian Theosophy 1891-1945, "Canadian Women Shaping Diasporic Religious Identities," Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2016