Edward Ayers

Edward Ayers is Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond.  Dr. Ayers was named National Professor of the Year and received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama at the White House in 2013.

 Ayers’s The Promise of the New South was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and another book, In the Presence of Mine Enemies:  Civil War in the Heart of America, based on a pioneering online archive, “The Valley of the Shadow,” won the Bancroft Prize for distinguished writing in American history.  The Thin Light of Freedom won the Lincoln Prize.

 Ayers is one of the cohosts for BackStory, a radio show and podcast about American history, heard every week coast-to-coast on over 200 stations and with over nine million downloads.  He is also an editor for American Panorama, an interactive digital atlas of American history, produced at the University of Richmond with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.