Pulitzer-Nominated Author to Close Out 2016 Speakers and Issues at MSU

Author and Clemson University professor Orville Vernon Burton will be the final speaker for the 2016 season of Midwestern State University's Speakers and Issues Series. Burton, twice named a Pulitzer finalist, will speak about "Lincoln's Civil War" at 7 p.m. Monday, April 18, at the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU.

Burton is a recognized expert on race relations and the American South, and a leader in digital humanities. His books The Age of Lincoln, a history of the five decades around Abraham Lincoln's presidency, and In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina, a comprehensive study of the community during the late 19th century, were both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

Burton is Creativity Professor of Humanities, Professor of History, Sociology, and Computer Science at Clemson University, and the Director of the Clemson CyberInstitute. From 2008-2010, he was the Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University. He was the founding director of the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science at the University of Illinois.

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.

The Speakers and Issues Series is supported by Elizabeth Bourland Hawley, the Libra Foundation, MSU's Prothro-Yeager College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Wichita Falls Times Record News, KCCU-FM NPR Radio, and KFDX-TV3.

Admission is free; donations are welcome. For more information, contact Dr. Greg Giddings at greg.giddings@msutexas.edu or visit www.msutexas.edu/sis.