In the Department of Religious Studies, our engagement with the study of religion is rooted in our attention to "contexts." These contexts—historical, cultural, artistic, local, global—provide the backdrop for understanding and evaluating human religious expressions. Those expressions, individual and collective, are most often concerned with constructing, identifying, articulating, and responding to meaning. Given the complexity of these contexts, our study requires approaches that are at the same time interdisciplinary and appreciative of the diversity of human cultures.