Rice honors the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth with lecture

Rice honors the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth with lecture
History Department brings noted scholar to discus ‘The Age of Lincoln’

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

To honor the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, Rice University’s History Department is sponsoring a free public lecture by noted scholar Orville Vernon Burton at 7 p.m. April 1 in Sewall Hall, Room 309.

In “The Age of Lincoln,” Burton will discuss the Civil War era in its rich complexity, presenting a fresh vision of its significance in American history.

Burton is the author and editor of 15 books and more than a hundred articles. He is the Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University and a member of the Congressional National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Foundation. He is director of the Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Illinois, where he is a professor of history, African-American studies and sociology. He is also a senior research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where he is associate director of humanities and social sciences.

Recognized for his teaching, Burton was selected nationwide as the 1999 U.S. Research and Doctoral University Professor of the Year (presented by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education). In 2004, he received the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Prize.

Burton’s research and teaching interests include the American South, especially race relations, family, community, politics, religion and the intersection of humanities and social sciences, especially humanities computing.