Stephen Berkwitz is department head of religious studies at Missouri State University, where he specializes in historical and contemporary studies of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and the role of Buddhist literature in the formation of identities and cultures. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Berkwitz's most recent publications include the monograph Buddhist History in the Vernacular: The Power of the Past in Late Medieval Sri Lanka, the edited volume Buddhism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives, and The History of the Buddha's Relic Shrine, a translation of the Sinhala Thupavanullsa.