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UGA’s Bethany Moreton named Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer

May 21, 2012

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Athens, Ga. - Bethany Moreton, a University of Georgia associate professor of history and women's studies, was one of 25 professors nationwide selected this year to join the speaker's bureau of the Organization of American Historians, the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history.

As an OAH Distinguished Lecturer, Moreton will bring her expertise to college campuses and conferences as well as to historical societies, libraries, museums and teacher workshops. Moreton studies the interactions between religious conservatism and the 20th-century economy. Her book, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Harvard University Press, 2009), has received a number of accolades and awards, including the OAH Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for the best first book in U.S. history. The New York Times Book Review described it as "a gracefully written and meticulously researched account of why people not only have been willing to work for the company, but often have also developed fierce loyalty to it."

Moreton, a faculty member in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has published several articles and chapters on the intersections of religion and economics and is a series editor for the Columbia University Press' Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism. She was named the 2009 Emerging Scholar by the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan and has been a visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Harvard Divinity School.

She earned her master's and doctoral degrees from Yale University and earned a bachelor's degree in Russian from Williams College in Massachusetts.

OAH lecturers agree to serve three-year, renewable terms and are selected by a subcommittee of the OAH Nominating Board and appointed by OAH President Albert Camarillo. The lectureship program roster currently includes more than 400 speakers from around the world discussing topics such as African-American history, the American Civil War and the Vietnam War.

Founded in 1907, the Organization of American Historians is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. The mission of the organization is to promote excellence in the scholarship, teaching and presentation of American history, and to encourage wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history. For more information, see http://www.oah.org/about/.