Founding Director and Chair of the I-CHASS Advisory Board
Vernon Burton was born in Royston, Georgia, reared in Ninety Six, South Carolina, graduated from Furman University, and received his Ph.D. in American History from Princeton University in 1976. He was Founding Director of the Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (I-CHASS) at the University of Illinois, where he is Professor of History, African American Studies, and Sociology. He is also a Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), where he is Associate Director of Humanities and Social Sciences. In addition, he is Executive Director of the College of Charleston’s Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World.
Burton is the author of more than a hundred articles and the author or editor of fourteen books (one of which is on cd-rom), including In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (subject of sessions at the Southern Historical Association and the Social Science History Association’s Annual meetings; nominated for a Pulitzer Prize). The Age of Lincoln was published in July 2007 and is the recipient of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Literary Award for Nonfiction. He was named a University Scholar in 1988 and was designated an inaugural University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar in 1999.
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). In 2004, he received the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Prize. Within the University of Illinois he has won teaching awards at the department, school, college, and campus levels. He was the recipient of the 2001-2002 Graduate College Outstanding Mentor Award and received the 2006 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement from the University of Illinois. He was appointed an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer for 2004-2009.
Burton’s research and teaching interests include the Civil War and the American South, especially race relations, family, community, politics, religion, and the intersection of humanities and social science, especially Humanities and Social Sciences Computing. He has served as president of the Agricultural History Society. Among his honors are fellowships and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Humanities Center, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Carnegie Foundation. He was a Pew National Fellow Carnegie Scholar for 2000-2001.
