Ph.D. in Anthropology
The Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) is the highest degree offered at LSU. It recognizes and demands mastery of one or more subfields of the discipline. Doctoral students go far beyond the level required for lesser degrees, and their work is expected to be of such quality that it could grace the pages of scholarly books and journals. Although doctoral students are expected to exhibit the intellectual breadth required of an academic position, the Ph.D. is primarily a research degree, and doctoral students should expect to spend little time sitting in undergraduate lecture courses in anthropology, save those needed to remedy deficiencies.
Requirements for Degree
The Ph.D. Program in Anthropology involves a total of 31 hours beyond the master’s degree (at least half at 7000-level) including:
- 1 hour of ANTH 7901: Introduction to Graduate Study (taken in first semester/year)
- 9 hours of 7000-level courses in ANTH (excluding 7901)
- 9 hours in approved cognate fields (including one 7000-level course - see below for info about cognate fields)
- 3 additional hours of 4000 or 7000-level courses
- 9 hours dissertation research (ANTH 9000)
Graduate seminars in anthropology may include:
- ANTH7032 Comparative Studies in World Costume
- ANTH7060 Conversation and Discourse
- ANTH7070 Ritual: Theory, Context, and Performance
- ANTH7074 Poetics of Place
- ANTH7081 Conceptual Issues in Human Evolution
- ANTH7085 History of Anthropological Thought
- ANTH7108 Mesoamerican Archaeology Seminar
- ANTH7200 Human Fertility
- ANTH7760 Readings in Creolization
- ANTH7766 Readings in the Caribbean and Louisiana
- ANTH7901 Introduction to Graduate Studies
- ANTH7906 Nature of Culture
- ANTH7909 Selected Topics in Anthropology (e.g., Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Contact Period, Origins of the Genus Homo, Paleopathology)
- ANTH7936 Advanced Qualitative Research in Geography and Anthropology
- ANTH7943 Paleoclimatology
- ANTH7954 Anthropology of Complex Societies
- ANTH7962 Field Methods in Linguistics
*If you are unsure if a course meets the requirements, please contact the Director of Graduate Studies or the Graduate Coordinator.
External Minor or Cognate Field
Departmental policy requires either an external minor or nine hours in approved cognate courses for the completion of the doctoral degree. The cognate courses or minor must be listed on the student’s program of study.
Requirements for a graduate minor are determined by the department issuing the minor (for example History, French Studies, Geology) and not by Geography & Anthropology. Students pursuing an external minor must have one member from the minor department on their committee. Geography PhD students may pursue a minor in Anthropology and vice versa.
The cognate field requirement is composed of a suite of courses—nine hours in cognate fields outside of the primary degree field (for example, either outside of Geography for the Geography PhD or outside of Anthropology for the Anthropology PhD) —of which at least three credit hours should be in an upper-level seminar (usually 7000-level). The courses need not be within a single discipline. The development of the cognate field may be quite flexible, and the specific suite of courses is developed by the student in consultation with the major professor and advisory committee. The cognate field may include traditional disciplines and emerging interdisciplinary fields, including, for example Oceanography, Geology, History, Atlantic Studies, Disaster Science Management (DSM), Anthropology, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Performance Studies). Students pursuing the Geography degree may select Anthropology as their cognate and vice-versa.