Civil War Historian to Receive UA’s Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Noted Civil War scholar Dr. George C. Rable, the Charles Grayson Summersell Chair in Southern History at The University of Alabama, will receive the 2011 Burnum Distinguished Faculty Award from UA.

To mark the award, Rable will deliver a lecture titled “Voices from the Civil War Era: A Few Reflections on Scholarship and Education,” at a ceremony at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, at UA’s Child Development Research Center. The event is free and open to the public.

The Burnum Award is one of the highest honors the University bestows on its faculty. Established by Celeste Burnum and the late Dr. John F. Burnum of Tuscaloosa, the award is presented annually to a professor who is judged by a faculty selection committee to have demonstrated superior scholarly or artistic achievements and profound dedication to the art of teaching.

For the past 36 years, Rable has researched and taught the history of the American Civil War. He has held the Summersell chair at UA since 1998. His most recent book, “God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War,” was published in 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press.

A starred review in Publishers Weekly stated that the book is “brilliant and groundbreaking …  Rable’s engrossing study of the role of religion in the Civil War will stand as the definitive religious history of America’s most divisive conflict.” The volume won the Jefferson Davis Award for history from the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va.

Rable researched and wrote this volume over the course of nine years; he relied extensively on primary sources, including journals, politicians’ letters and denominational records. Of particular interest to Rable were the many published sermons from preachers in a variety of denominations and religious newspapers, which published many articles about the war.

In addition, Rable is the author of “Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!” (2002) which also won the Jefferson Davis Award as well as several others, including the Lincoln Prize from Gettysburg College in 2003; “The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics” (1994); and “Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism” (1989).

He is researching a book that explores the relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan, a Union general and later Lincoln’s opponent in the 1864 presidential election.

His honors include the Blackmon-Moody Outstanding Professor Award from UA in 2003; he also served as president of the Society of Civil War Historians from 2004 to 2008. He will deliver the Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures at Louisiana State University in 2014. Rable earned his doctorate from LSU in 1978.

The department of history is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.