About

Scott Masson

Dr. Masson is an Associate Professor of English Literature at Tyndale University in Toronto, Canada. He teaches on subjects ranging from the literature of the Graeco-Roman period, the Bible as literature, Shakespeare, Milton, Seventeenth-century lit, Romantic literature, the work of C.S. Lewis and and J.R.R. Tolkien, Science fiction, practical criticism, and Classical and contemporary literary theory.

Dr. Masson was awarded his Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 2001 from the University of Durham. Before that, he lived and studied in Düsseldorf, Germany for three years. While in Germany, he fell in love with languages, becoming a German translator while learning Classical Greek and Latin at university.

Some of his research interests, as expressed in his book Romanticism, Hermeneutics, and the Crisis of the Human Sciences (Routledge, 2016), lie in exploring the way that the humanities have been repealed and replaced by the human sciences and a new constructivist anthropology. Tradition was abandoned in favour of the goal of a wholly self-constructed humanity.

The problems with this model has led him to seek to recover the integrity and scope of its educational forebear, Classical education and a richer humanities tradition, another primary interest. It led him to found Westminster Classical Christian Academy in Toronto and to be central to a revival of Classical education in Canada.

As a tenured professor, former pastor, public intellectual and proud Member of the Upper Mohawk band in Canada, Dr. Masson has lectured and written on a wide variety of topics and in various venues. Most, however, seem to centre upon the problems caused by departures from the Christian understanding of human nature (individual persons created in imago Dei). That view was abandoned by the Enlightenment and a substitute installed its successors, the Romantic poets.

For more than seven years, he and his wife and family also served in urban pastoral ministry in Toronto. Dr. Masson established and led a thriving College and Careers ministry in Toronto between 2008 and 2015, which managed to draw young people from all walks of life, and from all corners of the city to social and outreach events. He continues to encourage many as a conference and campus speaker, appearing many times on television and radio over the course of the last ten years. Some of his lectures and sermons can be found on his YouTube channel.

He is a proud husband and father of two and resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He takes great joy in the classical education process which has resulted in two beautiful children who have an established love of literature, music, mathematics and the life sciences, and are now steadily on the path towards a life long love of learning.

General Contact

Dr. Scott James Masson

PhD, English Literary Studies, University of Durham