McBride, Richard

Richard D. McBride II is Professor of Korean Studies and Buddhist Studies and Department Chair of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University.  He earned a PhD. in East Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA (2001), specializing in Korean and Chinese Buddhism and early Korean history.  He was a Fulbright Senior Researcher in Korea in 2007–2008, and he is presently associate editor of the International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture, published by the Academy of Buddhist Studies, Dongguk University.  His research interests include Buddhist cults in medieval China and Korea (roughly the 4^th to the 14^th centuries), particularly the use of dhāraṇī (Buddhist spells and codes); doctrinal Buddhism in medieval China and Korea; Chinese and Korean wonder tales and Buddhist hagiography; Buddhist cultural exchange between Song China and Koryŏ Korea; and kingship and institutional history in early Korean state of Silla (ca. 300–935). He is the author of Domesticating the Dharma:  Buddhist Cults and the Hwaŏm Synthesis in Silla Korea (2008), Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Ŭich’ŏn (2017), and Aspiring to Enlightenment:  Pure Land Buddhism in Silla Korea (2020), and is the editor and translator of several other books.