Charles D. Orzech is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He was co-chair of the Tantric Studies Seminar of the American Academy of Religion and a founding member of the Society for Tantric Studies.
His primary interests are in cultural contact and interaction and in the fundamental hybridity of human cultural activity. He explores those interests primarily through research on the appropriation and transformation of late Mahāyāna Buddhism in eighth- through thirteenth- century China. He teaches a variety of courses, from introductory Buddhism and Chinese religion to seminars on theories of myth and on semiotics and religious images.
His articles and translations have appeared in History of Religions, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Cahiers d’Extreme-Asie, Journal of the International Buddhist Studies Association, Journal of Chinese Religions, and elsewhere. He is the author of Politics and Transcendent Wisdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism (Pennsylvania State University Press, Hermeneutics Series, 1998). More recently, he was the general editor of Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia (1200 pages, E. J. Brill).
His publication with WSP is:
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Orzech, Charles D. (trans. Bai Zhaojie 白照傑; collated by Pei Changchun 裴長春 and Ji Yun 紀贇). Zhengzhi yu bore: Zhongguo Fojiao chansheng zhong de Renwang jing 政治與般若——中國佛教產生中的《仁王經》 [Politics and Transcendent Wisdom: The Scripture for Humane Kings in the Creation of Chinese Buddhism]. Hualin Foxue Yicong 華林佛學譯叢 [Hualin Translation Series on Buddhist Studies] IV. Singapore: World Scholastic Publishers, 2021.