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 and several repositories in nearby New Orleans also house important research documents close at hand.<br><br>The department is nationally and internationally recognized as a center for the study of the South and the Civil War. 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 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.<br>The program requires a minimum of 30 semester hours of credit (students frequently take more) with a thesis—24 hours of coursework and at least 6 hours of thesis research; 36 hours are required for a non-thesis MA. Half the coursework hours for both degrees must be at or above the 7000 level. Graduate students may also take 4000-level courses with a member of the graduate faculty who will assign additional work to earn graduate-level credit.