Rhodes College has announced the appointment of Dr. Scott Newstok, professor of English, as its inaugural executive director of the Spence Wilson Center for Interdisciplinary Humanities. Newly established at Rhodes thanks to a generous donation, the center will gather faculty, students, visiting scholars, and community members to address complex global questions through humanistic inquiry. In consultation with a faculty advisory board, the executive director will administer the center and oversee its programming.
Newstok earned a doctorate from Harvard University and was a Mellon post-doctoral fellow in the humanities at Yale University Library′s Special Collections. Before joining the Rhodes faculty in 2007, he taught at Oberlin College, Amherst College, and Gustavus Adolphus College. In his prior role as the founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment, Newstok convened a wide range of symposia, bringing together scholars and creative artists to discuss their work.
A nationally recognized voice on humanities education, Newstok has received support from foundations such as the American Library Association, the American Philosophical Society, the Fulbright Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center. His publication How to Think Like Shakespeare (Princeton University Press, 2020) was named a Book of the Year by the Times Literary Supplement. He currently is editing Michel de Montaigne’s essays on education, in a new version by award-winning translator Tess Lewis, and collaborating with scholar John Guillory on an archival history of the cultural technique of “close reading,” which will include a free online database.
Newstok will continue to teach the history and practice of writing as well as offer interdisciplinary seminars, as he has previously done for the Liberal Arts in Prison Program, the Meeman Center for Lifelong Learning, Rhodes Summer School in London, and primary and secondary schools across Shelby County, TN. He has received the college’s Clarence Day Awards for Outstanding Teaching (2016) and Outstanding Research/Creative Activity (2021). This semester, Newstok’s first-year writing seminars are devoted to “Unpacking the Library: From Alexandria to AI.”
In addition to his outreach as a board member for local institutions and as a trustee of Humanities Tennessee, Newstok has served as a faculty representative on the college’s Board of Trustees, president of Rhodes’ Phi Beta Kappa chapter, and co-director of Post-Graduate Scholarships and Fellowships.
“I am delighted that Scott has taken on this important leadership position. Scott’s experience and energy will ensure that the Wilson Center and the humanities in general remain at the heart of the college’s mission,” said Dr. Timothy Huebner, provost and vice president for academic affairs.
Rhodes is currently conducting a national search for the Spence L. Wilson Distinguished Professor in Humanities—a position distinct from the executive director—who will begin at Rhodes in August 2025.