Noel Salmond

Biography

Educated at Upper Canada College, Bishop’s University, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, I went on to do an M.A. in the History and Philosophy of Religion at Concordia in Montreal. I studied Christian theology and then Sanskrit at McGill University obtaining my doctorate in Asian religions in 1999. I also studied South Asian art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and held an internship in the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum. I have been a faculty research fellow with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute in India and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Research Interests

• Religion and visual culture
• Modernist movements in Hinduism and Buddhism
• Religion and discourses on the environment
• Theories of Religion

2024/2025 Courses

HUMS 1000 Foundational Myths and Histories (F/W)
RELI 2510A:  Hinduism (F)
RELI 2800A:  Indigenous Traditions (F)
HUMS 4903B/RELI 4850B/RELI 5850B Hermeneutics: Interpreting Texts (W)

Publications

Hindu Iconoclasts: Rammohun Roy, Dayananda Sarasvati, and Nineteenth-Century Polemics Against Idolatry. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004.

“Religion and Art in India: Aesthetic Theories, Iconometric Codes.” Journal of Religion and Culture, Volume 6, (Spring 1992): 123-139.

“Advaita and Imagery: Sankara on Devotional Objects, and as Himself an Object of Devotion.” Arc 23 (1995): 89-105.

“Iconoclast and Idolater: Gandhi on the Worship of Images.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 31/3-4 (2002): 373 – 390.

“Julia Butterfly: Environmentalist as Stylite and Ascetic.” Ecotheology: The Journal of Religion, Nature and the Environment. Vol. 11, No. 4 (December, 2006): 465-480.