Religious Studies aims at an academic investigation of the world's religions, of religious history, and of the place of religion in world cultures and societies from the ancient to the present. It draws on faculty resources from a wide range of traditional academic disciplines: anthropology, history, philosophy, classics, Near Eastern studies, Asian studies, literature, art history, political science, and sociology. Religious Studies respects the beliefs and backgrounds of the students who pursue courses in this area, but it also approaches its objects of study in a thoroughly scholarly manner, maintaining both intellectual openness and critical rigor.