Although the study of human beings and human communities over the past few centuries has been effectively divided into disciplines and disciplinary clusters (the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences), the Human Sciences approaches this study through perspectives that bring together the multiple insights, methodologies, and disciplines that have been developed to account for human complexity. Understanding that the division of human knowledge into discrete categories is cultural and historical, the Human Sciences considers both what is gained from those disciplinary divisions and what new forms of knowledge might be produced in and through conversations across them.

The Human Sciences primarily locates the common ground between the humanities and social sciences using interpretive and critical modes of inquiry rather than quantitative ones. Our central commitment to critical modes of inquiry emerges from the belief that some of the most interesting work in both the humanities and social sciences over the past several decades has been work that considers how ways of speaking and writing inform and shape ways of knowing. Since quantitative methodologies themselves are among the languages we use to make sense of the world, however, quantitative approaches are also valued and studied in the Human Sciences Program.

The practice of seeking a common ground between the humanities and social sciences can best be described as a practice of mutual influence. While social scientists may critique the aestheticization of cultural activity (which removes cultural activity from a social context), scholars in the humanities may challenge the objectification of human behavior (which approaches individuals or communities as objects, rather than subjects, of knowledge).

The Human Sciences Program has been recognized for its excellence in the National Doctoral Program Survey for the year 2000, released October 17, 2001. The report, which can be accessed online at http://survey.nagps.org, is based on a national survey of graduate students and recent Ph.D.s in the Humanities.

The GW Human Sciences Program ranks 16th among 302 doctoral humanities programs across the country, and is in the first of the survey's four quartiles (where it is 16th out of 77 programs). Human Sciences also ranks highly among interdisciplinary doctoral programs.

The survey is based on ten categories, and the GW Human Sciences Program is rated "above average" in all ten. The evaluation notes particular strengths in the categories of Preparation for a Broad Range of Careers, Mentoring, and Overall Satisfaction.