Johan Elverskog is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at SMU. He is the author and editor of seven books including most recently the co-edited volume Wutai Shan and Qing Culture (2011), and Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (2010), which was the winner of the American Academy of Religion’s 2011 Award for Excellence in the Historical Study of Religion. His work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation, among others. He has also been a fellow at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.