This year-long series will explore how societies and individuals across a large span of time and space have constructed categories and what meanings they have attached to them. In particular, the series will explore the creation of categories themselves and how historians and scholars have employed and constructed categories to structure their investigations of the past. Among the events the History Center will be examining on the theme of "Constructing Categories" during 2011-12 academic year will be the environment as a category in shaping the human experience; how racial categories have emerged, evolved, and been defined over time; and how religious identities have been formulated and substantiated.