Cosponsored by Center for Lincoln Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and College of Business and ManagementThis year’s Lincoln Legacy lecture will focus on Lincoln, Immigration, and Citizenship. Professors Jason Silverman and Mark Steiner, scholars in the field of Lincoln studies will discuss Lincoln’s views on immigration and citizenship. Dr. Michael Burlingame, the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies will moderate and provide an overview.
Jason Silverman, Palmer Professor Emeritus, recently retired from the faculty at South Carolina’s Winthrop University, where he taught history for over three decades. He specializes in the history of the old South and the Civil War. After receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia and his graduate degrees from Colorado State University and the University of Kentucky, he taught history at Yale for four years before joining the faculty at Winthrop. The author or editor of 11 books, including “Lincoln and the Immigrant” and “Immigration in the American South,” he has won numerous awards for his teaching and three of his books have been nominated for national book awards. He is currently working on a study of President Lincoln’s reputation in 19th century Europe.
Mark Steiner, Professor of Law at the South Texas University School of Law in Houston, specializes in immigration law and American legal history. He was twice selected as a Fulbright Scholar and taught law at the University of Latvia and the College of Law at National Taiwan University. He is the author of “An Honest Calling: The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln “ and Lincoln and Citizenship,”, soon to be published by the Southern Illinois University Press as a volume in its Concise Lincoln Library. For years he served as an editor on the Lincoln Legal Papers Project with UIS Professor of History Cullom Davis.