History (Graduate Program)

For information regarding the UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM, click here. 

Program Overview

The Department of History has earned an outstanding reputation for both the quality of its teaching and the high standards of its scholarship. The LSU Libraries contain more than three million volumes, more than five million microforms, and a manuscript collection of more than 12 million items. LSU’s Special Collections, housed in Hill Memorial Library, are especially rich in materials relating to the Lower Mississippi Valley, the South, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. The Louisiana State Archives in Baton Rouge also houses important research documents close at hand.

The department is nationally and internationally recognized as a center for the study of the South and the Civil War. But it also has graduate students and faculty working in a host of other areas of American history, including the cultural history of the 20th century. It also has particular strengths in British history, the Middle Ages and Renaissance studies, and modern European history. In addition, it has faculty members who publish in and teach the history of the Ancient world, Latin America, Africa, as well as South and East Asia.

Administration

Admission

Applications and supporting materials for all graduate study must be submitted through the online application site for the LSU Graduate School: www.lsu.edu/gradapply. Official transcripts, official test scores, and other materials that come from third-party sources must be mailed to: Graduate Student Services, 114 West David Boyd Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. These paper documents are stored electronically and departments have access to all materials submitted by and/or on behalf of a student applying to graduate study.

Applications for admission are received and evaluated by the department during the spring semester. Applicants must adhere to the application deadlines established by the Graduate School. The departmental deadline for applications is January 15. Students seeking admission must submit satisfactory credentials from previous study, acceptable GRE scores, three letters of recommendation, a statement of purpose, and a writing sample of approximately 10-20 pages. International students whose native language is not English must also submit an acceptable TOEFL, IELTS, or PTE score.

Financial Assistance

Financial assistance is available to some students. All applicants for admission to the MA and PhD programs will be considered for teaching assistantships valued at $11,150. Students with full time (50%/20 hours per week) assistantships also are exempt from tuition payments, although they must still pay required university fees. In a few cases, for extremely well qualified students, the university will provide a $3,000 supplement to the amount of the assistantship. The department also has a limited number of $5,000 enhancements that may be added to an assistant’s regular stipend. These are awarded to incoming PhD students on a competitive basis. The university also provides TAs $350 per semester to cover the cost of health insurance. To ensure consideration for financial aid, all application materials should be submitted in accordance with deadlines (February 1 for the history department) established by the LSU Graduate School.

Graduate Faculty

(check current listings by department by clicking this link)

Stephen Andes (6A) • Mexico, modern Latin America
Devyn S. Benson (6A) • Modern Latin America, Caribbean, African diaspora
Andrew Burstein (7M) • Revolutionary and early Republic U.S.
Nancy Clark (7M) • South Africa
Gibril R. Cole (6A) • Africa
David H. Culbert (M) • U.S. diplomatic history, mass media
Maribel Dietz (M) • Medieval history, Late Antiquity
Gaines M. Foster (M) • New South, U.S. religious and cultural
Zevi Gutfreund (6A) • 20th century U.S., immigration, education
John B. Henderson (M) • East Asia, China
Paul E. Hoffman (M) • Colonial Latin America, Spain, Southeast borderlands
Nancy G. Isenberg (7M) • Early national U.S., law, and gender
Christine J. Kooi (7M) • Renaissance, Reformation, Early Modern Netherlands
Alecia P. Long (M) • Louisiana, gender, sexuality
Suzanne L. Marchand (7M) • Germany/Austria, European intellectual and cultural
Benjamin F. Martin (M) • Modern France, 19th century Europe
Michael Pasquier (M) • U.S. religion, Louisiana
Kodi Roberts (6A) • African-American
Steven K. Ross (3A) • Ancient Greece and Rome
Aaron C. Sheehan-Dean (M) • Civil War, U.S. South
Charles J. Shindo (7M) • 20th century U.S., cultural, American West, Asian American history
Victor Stater (M) • Tudor-Stuart England, early modern Europe
Meredith Veldman (M) • Modern Britain, 20th century Europe
Margherita Zanasi (M) • Modern China, nationalism, economic thought

Faculty Publications

A representative sample of faculty publications includes the following:

Stephen Andes, The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920-1940
Andrew Burstein, Lincoln Dreamt He Died: The Midnight Visions of Remarkable Americans from Colonial Times to Freud, Madison and Jefferson; Jefferson’s Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello; The Passions of Andrew Jackson; Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of American’s Romantic Self-Image
Gibril Cole, The Krio of West Africa: Islam, Culture, Creolization, and Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century
David H. Culbert, World War II, Film and History; News for Everyman: Radio and Foreign Affairs in Thirties America
Maribel Dietz, Wandering Monks, Virgins, and Pilgrims: Ascetic Travel in the Mediterranean World A.D. 300-800
Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality; Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South
John B. Henderson, The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy: Neo-Confucian, Islamic, Jewish and Early Christian Patterns; The Development of Chinese Cosmology
Paul E. Hoffman, Florida’s Frontiers; A New Andalucía and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast During the 16th Century; The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean
Nancy G. Isenberg, Madison and Jefferson; Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr; Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America
Christine Kooi, Calvinists and Catholics in Holland’s Golden Age; Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572-1620
Alecia P. Long, The Great Southern Babylon: Sex, Race, and Respectability in New Orleans, 1865-1920
Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship; Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970
Benjamin F. Martin, Years of Plenty, Years of Want: France and the Legacy of the Great War; France in 1938; France and The Après Guerre, 1918-1924; Crime and Criminal Justice Under the Third Republic
Michael Pasquier, Fathers on the Frontier: French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789-1870
Steven K. Ross, Roman Edessa: Politics and Culture on the Eastern Fringe of the Roman Empire
Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia
Charles J. Shindo, 1927 and the Rise of Modern America; Dust Bowl Migrants in the American Imagination
Victor Stater, Duke Hamilton is Dead! A Story of Aristocratic Life and Death in Stuart Britain; Noble Government: The Stuart Lord Lieutenancy and the Transformation of English Politics
Meredith Veldman, Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic Protest, 1945-1980
Margherita Zanasi, Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China

Programs

• History, Ph.D.

• History, M.A.

• Joint Degree: M.A./M.L.I.S.