Posted by William Nunnelley on 2009-10-06

Noted historian Orville Vernon Burton, author of The Age of Lincoln, will present the annual J. Roderick Davis Lecture at Samford Thursday, Oct. 22, at 7:30 p.m. in Wright Center Concert Hall.

The program is a salute to this year’s 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth in 1809. The public is invited free.

Dr. Burton is a prolific scholar, having written or edited 15 books and more than 100 articles. The Age of Lincoln, his most recent work, won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Literary Award for Nonfiction, and was selected as book of the month by the Book of the Month Club, the History Book Club and the Military Book Club.

The book is not a typical history of the Civil War, but rather a sweeping look at America from the 1840s through the war, Reconstruction and the Industrial Revolution, with Lincoln as a central figure, according to Samford historian John Mayfield in a review in Seasons, the Samford magazine.

Burton is the Burroughs Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University. He was previously professor of history, African American studies and sociology at the University of Illinois. He was selected as the 1999 U.S. Research and Doctoral University Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Cosponsored with support from the Alabama Humanities Foundation, the lecture will be preceded at 4 p.m. by a Lincoln discussion by scholars Lawrence Kohl, University of Alabama; Harriet Amos Doss, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and William Ross, Samford’s Cumberland School of Law. The panel discussion will be held in Brock Forum of Dwight Beeson Hall at Samford

 
Samford is a leading Christian university offering undergraduate programs grounded in the liberal arts with an array of nationally recognized graduate and professional schools. Founded in 1841, Samford is the 87th-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Samford enrolls 6,101 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries in its 10 academic schools: arts, arts and sciences, business, divinity, education, health professions, law, nursing, pharmacy and public health. Samford fields 17 athletic teams that compete in the tradition-rich Southern Conference and ranks 6th nationally for its Graduation Success Rate among all NCAA Division I schools.