Religious studies is a field of meaning-making about human spaces of meaning-making. To explore questions about the expansive (un)discipline of religion, we must bridge political science with art history, literature with phenomenology, philosophy with psychology. The field of religious studies innately crosses departmental boundaries, asking us to traverse academic divides as we excavate the dynamic terrain of religion.
“‘Religion’ is an anthropological not a theological category.”
Jonathan Z. Smith, Religion, Religions, Religious
Perhaps unsurprisingly, my studies of religion carried me into the even more expansive field of “global studies,” a catch-all term for any and all scholarship on the world and its challenges. I am interested in how global studies differentiates itself from international affairs to designate a space for research that contends with challenges both deeply local and manifestly transnational.
My work carried me from religious studies to global studies, and from global studies to the realm of interdisciplinary collaboration.
