Profile

Charles Prebish came to Utah State University following more than thirty-five years on the faculty of the Pennsylvania State University. He earned his B.A. at Western Reserve University, his M.A. at Case Western Reserve University, and his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at the University of Wisconsin in 1971. He currently holds the Charles Redd Chair in Religious Studies.

Dr. Prebish has published 21 books and more than 75 scholarly articles and chapters. His book Buddhist Monastic Discipline (1975) revitalized modern study of the Buddhist monastic disciplinary code, and his 1999 volume Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America is considered the classic volume of the Western Buddhist tradition. Dr. Prebish is the leading pioneer in the establishment of the study of Western Buddhism as a sub-discipline in Buddhist Studies. In 1993 he held the Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies at the University of Calgary as Distinguished Visiting Professor, and in 1997 was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation National Humanities Fellowship for research at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Prebish has been an officer in the International Association of Buddhist Studies, and was co-founder of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion. In 1996, he co-founded the Routledge "Critical Studies in Buddhism" series, and currently co-edits the Routledge "World Religions" series of innovative textbooks. He is also co-editor of the Routeldge Encyclopedia of Buddhism project. In 1994, he co-founded the online Journal of Buddhist Ethics, which was the first online peer-reviewed journal in the field of Buddhist Studies. This award winning journal now has 6000 subscribers in 60 countries. He has also served as editor of the Journal of Global Buddhism and Critical Review of Books in Religion.

During his career at Penn State, he taught nearly two dozen different courses in Religious Studies and had more than 15,000 students. Among his courses were the first course on American Buddhism taught in a North American University, and the first course on the relationship between sport and religion. He currently co-edits an eTextbook project sponsored by the Journal of Buddhist Ethics. In 2005, he was honored with a "festschrift" volume by his colleagues in Buddhist Studies titled Buddhist Studies from India to America: Essays in Honor of Charles S. Prebish.