The Department of History has earned an outstanding reputation for both the quality of its teaching and the high standards of its scholarship. The?Louisiana State University?Libraries contain more than three million volumes, more than five million microforms, and a manuscript collection of more than 12 million items. Louisiana State University?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 curriculum requirements for the PhD degree in History from?Louisiana State University are the following:

A minimum of 54 credit hours of coursework and dissertation research are necessary to complete the program. The plan of coursework depends on the student?s earlier preparation in history, and the major requirement is a dissertation ?which embodies creative scholarship? and which ?must add to the sum of existing knowledge and give evidence of considerable literary skill.? Each student must offer three fields of study: one major field and two minor fields.