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Pamela D. Winfield is Professor of Buddhist Studies at Elon University and specializes in Japanese Buddhist art and doctrine. She has edited three special issues of the peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal CrossCurrents (2014, 2017, 2019) and was the lead co-editor (with Steven Heine) of Zen and Material Culture (Oxford University Press, 2017). She is also the author of the award-winning Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kūkai and Dōgen on the Art of Enlightenment (Oxford University Press, 2013; Association of Asian Studies – Southeastern Conference Book Award, 2015) and numerous articles on religion and visual culture. Her research has been supported by the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Asian Studies, the Asian Cultural Council, and others. She serves on the Body and Religion steering committee and co-chairs the Art, Literature, and Religion Unit at the American Academy of Religion, and has convened or co-convened numerous conferences and conference panels that explore religious conceptions of the body.

Mina Garcia is Professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Elon University and specializes in continental and colonial Spanish literature of the 16th-21st centuries. Her first book Magic, Sorcery and Witchcraft: Between La Celestina and Cervantes (Magia, Hechiceria y Brujeria: Entre La Celestina y Cervantes" (Renacimiento, 2011) was recently followed by her second book Idolatry and the Construction of the Spanish Empire (University Press of Colorado, 2019). Throughout her numerous articles and chapter contributions, Garcia explores the role of literature in the expansion of the Spanish empire, Early Modern Spanish literature, transatlantic studies, Latin American colonial culture and literature, the relation between society and superstition in the early modern period, and the spiritual and territorial conquest of the Americas, especially colonial Mexico.