Department of History
The Department of History’s reach extends throughout the University. Whether it involves research or instruction, the faculty is deeply involved in much of the scholarship that takes place at LSU, including the new Multi-Disciplinary Hiring Initiative for studying the Atlantic World.
In addition to training graduate students and teaching many very popular undergraduate courses, faculty members serve in a large number of campus and community outreach activities. Although the department may be best known for its work on the South and the Civil War, its members conduct research and write on topics ranging from American popular culture to European cultural and intellectual history to Chinese Confucianism.
They also garner many honors for their work at LSU.
Professor William Cooper won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for his biography of Jefferson Davis. Both Professors Paul Hoffman, for a book on the Spanish exploration of the southeastern United States, and Charles Royster, for one on the American Revolution, were awarded the Francis Parkman Prize for historical writing. Professor Royster also received both the prestigious Lincoln and Bancroft prizes for his book on the Civil War, The Destructive War. He and other members of the faculty have won other awards for their writing. They have also held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as been resident fellows at the National Humanities Center and the equivalent institutions in Germany and the Netherlands.
Most recently, Professor Margherita Zanasi was appointed to a fellowship at the institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She will sue her year there to work on her next book, the working title of which is From Empire to Nation: Chinese Economic Though in Transition. Zanasi was also awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, which will enable her to spend the summer working in the historical records in China. Professor Mark L. Thompson will spend the spring on a fellowhsip for study at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island.
The international Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television is edited by the department’s Professor David Culbert. And the department hosts a continuing round of lectures, seminar, and colloquia, including the prestigious annual Fleming Lectures in Southern history, the Modern History Colloquium Series, periodic works in progress seminars, and the Medieval and Renaissance Interdisciplinary Studies, or MARIS, Program.
MARIS is still a relatively new program to the University and began with the assistance of a National Endowment for the Humanities Focus Grant and a Louisiana Board of Regents Enhancement Grant. The project encompasses a lecture and workshop series, the establishment of the Consortium of Medieval and Renaissance Scholars from Louisiana colleges and universities, and a monthly faculty forum which faculty and graduate students may present their current research.
