In addition to what may be required by individual courses, faculty expect graduate students to engage in a constant program of self-education that is keyed to the particular areas or sub-disciplines in which their primary interest(s) lie. Twenty-four hours of course-work provides a very uneven exposure to a field as broad as religious studies, even should you decide to concentrate most of your courses within a more narrow area (e.g., early Judaism; religion and gender). If asked, the faculty will provide reading lists keyed to certain subject areas or sub-disciplines which enumerate a series of titles or works whose mastery they consider crucial for serious students of that field. Faculty assume graduate students will approach them for such bibliographic advice, they expect them to study the items on the list(s), and they hope that the students will utilize the broader knowledge thus gained in their subsequent coursework and their comprehensive examinations.