Stephen G. Covell is the Mary Meader Professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University. A Fulbright scholar, he has written extensively on modern Japanese Buddhism. His research interests include self-cultivation traditions, death and dying, and Japanese religions.

Stuart H. Young is Associate Professor of East Asian Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at Bucknell University. He is author of Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China (2015). A scholar of premodern Chinese religions, his research focuses on rituals of silk production, religious uses of silk, and multispecies dimensions of Buddhism and Daoism.

Ying Zeng is Senior Director of Asian Initiatives at Western Michigan University. Her research interests are in Chinese American social history and Asian American Literature.