Dr. Stephen Covell is an assistant professor of Comparative Religion and director of WMU’s Michitoshi Soga Japan Center. He teaches courses on Japanese religion, religion and education, death and dying, pedagogy, and religion and ethics. Additionally, Dr. Covell leads each June a 10-day Japan Religion and Culture study abroad program that offers advanced students a behind-the-scenes tour of Japanese religious life.

Dr. Covell earned his Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University in 2001.  He lived in Japan for ten years, where he studied the Japanese language (Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama), conducted fieldwork in Buddhist temples, conducted research as a postdoctoral fellow at Tokyo University, and as a research associate at Taisho University and International Christian University. He has also lectured, taught English (on the Japanese Ministry of Education’s JET program), and worked as a translator in Japan.  His scholarly work has been recognized with several awards, including a Japanese Ministry of Education scholarship, a Japan Foundation fellowship, the Crown Prince Akihito scholarship, the Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship, a Center for the Study of Religion Fellowship, and others.

Dr. Covell’s current writing projects include moral and religious education in contemporary Japan, a textbook on death and dying in Asia, and a biography of the Tendai priest Yamada Etai.  His publications include Japanese Temple Buddhism, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005) and Traditional Buddhism in Contemporary Japan appeared in a special edition of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (2004).