The disciplines that make up the social sciences help us analyze the interactions that take place between individuals, between groups or societies, and between an individual and a group. Studying these interactions helps us understand the political and social dynamics that govern contemporary societies. Equipped with this understanding, we can participate more effectively, and as informed and engaged citizens, in social, political, and economic decision making. The Social Sciences component of the Perspectives requirement serves to introduce students both to the principal concerns of disciplines in the social sciences and to the methods by which social scientists collect and evaluate knowledge and test hypotheses.

Anthropology (literally the study of humans) is an extremely broad and diverse field concerned with every aspect of the human condition: past present and future. An undergraduate majoring in anthropology at the University of Tennessee learns of this breadth and diversity by taking courses in cultural, biological and archaeological anthropology. The major is designed so that all students are trained in these primary subfields, but the curriculum also allows the student to concentrate in those aspects of anthropology that she/he finds most interesting.