Opening keynote lecture
Thursday, September 21, 2006
7:30pm

About the presenter

Edward Ayers is the author of the Bancroft Prize-winning In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 (2004). He is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia where he holds the Hugh P. Kelly Professorship in History. Ayers has written widely on the American South and has been a leading force in digital history. He is the co-founder of the Virginia Center for Digital History and the Director of the project entitled "Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War," winner of the e-Lincoln Prize from Gettysburg College, honoring outstanding high-tech projects that bring 19th century history to life electronically. Ayers is the author of What Caused the Civil War: Reflections on the South and Southern History, and The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.

View portions of the presentation

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Video segment 1
Using text analysis to discover ideological trends

Video segment 2
"Mapping" time and finding chronological bearings

Video segment 3
A graphical representation of the "big picture" of emancipation

Video segment 4
Zooming down: What emancipation meant to individual black Americans

Video segment 5
Student involvement with digital scholarship (Southern History Database), and a look to the future of historical scholarship

Blog

View a live-blogged entry about this presentation.

Links

This presentation included material from:

The Valley of the Shadow

The Emancipation Project

The Southern History Database

Essay

An essay based upon ideas presented in this lecture and separately edited for print publication, is available.

Interview

This presenter participated in our ongoing series of Digital History interviews.