Ayers joins NEH council

Edward L. Ayers, the Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History, has been appointed by President Clinton to a six-year term on the National Council on the Humanities. The council advises on programs and reviews grant applications for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the federal agency that supports research and education in history, literature and other areas of the humanities.

Ayers, who is on leave at Stanford University this year, has been on the U.Va. history faculty since 1980 and specializes in Southern history.

His 1992 book, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. He directs a hypermedia history archive, "The Valley of the Shadow," about two communities in the Civil War, that has been widely recognized as a promising new way to explore and learn about history. It was just published as a book and CD-ROM by W.W. Norton.