Dr. Edward L. Ayers, president of the University of Richmond and co-host of radio’s BackStory, will speak on “The Shape of the Civil War” for the Ida Wise East Memorial Lecture in the Memorial Ballroom, Hall Campus Center,at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 18.
UR president since 2007, Dr. Ayers is a noted historian and the author of 10 books on the American South. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the National Medal for the Humanities, awarded by President Obama at the White House in the summer of 2013. He has also won the Bancroft Prize for distinguished writing in American History and the Beveridge Prize for the best book in English on the history of the Americas since 1492. He was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Dr. Ayers’ digital archive project, The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, has been used in thousands of classrooms around the world, and he works closely with the Digital Scholarship Lab at UR on a digital atlas of American history, funded by a large grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Dr. Ayers is also a co-host of BackStory, a nationally syndicated radio show that ties history to the present day.
In 2003, Dr. Ayers was awarded the National Professor of the Year from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and he annually teaches an undergraduate seminar for first-year students.
