Wilson named Park National Bank Leadership Fellow

Douglas Wilson, co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center and George A. Lawrence Professor Emeritus of English at Knox College, has been honored by North Central College as the 2007-08 Park National Bank Leadership Fellow.

The award was presented Thursday, April 10 on the Naperville, Illinois campus in conjunction with a lecture by Wilson based on his recent book "Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words," which won the 2007 Lincoln Prize, the highest award for Lincoln scholarship.

Wilson co-directs the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, where he taught English for more than 30 years and served as director of the library for 19 years. Wilson serves as an advisor to the U.S. and Illinois Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commissions. He has received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Huntington Library, Newberry Library, and his books have won prizes from the Abraham Lincoln Institute and the Civil War Roundtable of New York. Wilson has also written extensively on Thomas Jefferson, and has published articles in Time, American Heritage and The Atlantic Monthly.

Wilson and his colleague, Lincoln Studies Center co-director Rodney Davis, transcribed and published thousands of hand-written documents in the Abraham Lincoln Papers for the Library of Congress website. Most recently, they have prepared a new edition of the texts of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates that will be published this fall in time for the 150th anniversary of the debates.

Wilson earned a bachelor's degree at Doane College, and master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1991 he received an Alumni Award for Distinguished Scholarship from Doane College and an Outstanding Faculty Award from Knox College. In 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Knox College.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 45 states and 44 nations. Knox's 'Old Main' is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.