Spring 2025 Course Offerings
From the origins of World Civilization to Medieval witchcraft to the American West to the history of conspiracy theories and the end of the Cold War: We've got it all!
Many spaces are still open in some of the History Department's course offerings for the coming semester. Check schedules and subject matter:
Geaux Teach
Graduates of Geaux Teach, the Major in History with a Concentration in Secondary Education, pose with program advisor Prof. Zevi Gutfreund (far right). For information on the Secondary Education history program: Geaux Teach
Congratulations to Julia Palmer, Class of 2024 and Geaux Teach alumna, who was named New Teacher of the Year at Zachary High School.
High honor for LSU History professor
Boyd Professor Suzanne Marchand has been elected president of the American Historical Association, the premier professional organization for historians in the United States. Prof. Marchand will serve as vice-president during the coming year (2025) and president the year after that. Congratulations to Dr. Marchand on this signal honor!
Book News
The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803-1930 
Focusing on prison development in early New Orleans, Prof. Bardes dramatically rewrites the origins of mass incarceration in the United States. Most Americans believe that enslaved people were never incarcerated. The Carceral City reveals the opposite: in parts of the South, enslaved people were arrested and jail at astronomical rates. Lawmakers built massive slave prisons to help slaveholders maintain their control and profit. Indeed, in New Orleans—for most of the past half-century, the city with the highest incarceration rate in the United States—enslaved people were jailed at higher rates before the Civil War than are Black residents today. The true origins of mass incarceration, Bardes argues, lie in these early nineteenth-century efforts to design prisons for the specific needs of slave societies.
"Exceptionally well written, both smart and smooth.” --Jeff Forret, Lamar University
Events
Monday, Sept. 16: Prof. Peter Coviello of the University of Illinois at Chicago lectures on gender and sexuality in The Shining at 4PM in the Sternberg Lounge of the Honor's College. Prof. Coviello is a leading queer theorist and scholar of 19th century American literature, and the author of six books, including Make Yourselves Gods: Mormonism and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism (Chicago), a finalist for the 2020 John Whitmer Historical Association Best Book Prize; Long Players (Penguin), a memoir selected as one of ARTFORUM’s Ten Best Books of 2018; and Tomorrow’s Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU), a 2013 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies.
Friday, Sept. 27: New Books reception. Professors John Bardes, Gaines Foster, Susan Grunewald, Julia Irwin, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean will be on hand to discuss their recent work. 3:30 PM in the Grand Salon of the French House. Watch this space for details.
Friday, Nov. 1: Dr. Whitney Nell Stewart's Modern History Colloquium Lecture "The Past, Present, and Future of Southern Plantations," 3:30PM, French House 135.
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