Dr. Gretchen E. Henderson has been named the Spence L. Wilson Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Rhodes College following a national search. In this position, Henderson will help enhance the humanities at the college as well as serve on the advisory board of the Spence L. Wilson Center for Interdisciplinary Humanities.
Henderson is an interdisciplinary scholar whose multimedia work traverses environmental arts, cultural histories, integrative sciences, and public humanities. A native of San Francisco, CA, Henderson earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Princeton University, an MFA from Columbia University, and a doctorate in English and creative writing from the University of Missouri–Columbia.
Henderson’s book Ugliness: A Cultural History was translated into five languages and reviewed in The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Times Literary Supplement. Her fifth book, Life in the Tar Seeps: A Spiraling Ecology from a Dying Sea, was published by Trinity University Press (2023). With the University of Arizona Poetry Center, she currently is leading a global collaborative project titled Dear Body of Water to cultivate care for watersheds.
Her work has been supported by Opera America, the Michalski Foundation, and the John Carter Brown Library. Among her awards are the Aldo and Estella Leopold Writing Residency, the Lucas Artist Program Fellowship at Montalvo Arts Center, the Artist-in-Residence at Fallingwater, and the Interdisciplinary Arts Fellowship from the Neltje Center for Excellence in Creativity and the Arts.
A dedicated educator, Henderson recently taught at The University of Texas at Austin, where she was a faculty fellow at the Humanities Institute and associate director for research at the Harry Ransom Center. She also has served as co-director of an NEH Institute on Museums (Georgetown University); a Tanner Fellow in Environmental Humanities (University of Utah); a Distinguished Speaker in Art History (Rutgers University); and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow (MIT).
“I am delighted that Gretchen E. Henderson will be joining us this fall,” said Dr. Timothy Huebner, provost and vice president for academic affairs. “Professor Henderson is a creative writer, a big thinker, and an interdisciplinary bridge builder—in other words, she is exactly who we need to advance new initiatives in the humanities at Rhodes. She will be a terrific addition to our faculty.”
The search committee for the Spence L. Wilson Distinguished Professor in the Humanities was co-chaired by Profs. Sarah Rollens (religious studies) and Stephen Wirls (philosophy) and involved scholars from across the humanities: Profs. Gordon Bigelow (English); Charles Hughes (history and urban studies); Abou-Bakar Mamah (French and Francophone studies); Susan Satterfield (Ancient Mediterranean studies); Etty Terem (history and Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern studies); and Scott Newstok (executive director of the Spence L. Wilson Center for Interdisciplinary Humanities). The committee thanks the entire campus community who engaged with the search.
The Spence L. Wilson Center for Interdisciplinary Humanities was established in 2024 thanks to a generous gift from longtime Rhodes benefactor Spence L. Wilson and brings communities together to address complex global questions through humanistic inquiry.