News & Notes

November 20, 2012 Humanities Tennessee’s board of directors has named Tim Henderson the executive director of the organizaton. He will assume that role following President Robert Cheatham’s retirement at the end of the year. Henderson is currently director of operations at Humanities Tennessee. He has been with HT since 1998, serving as the director of digital programs before taking on his current role.

November 19, 2012 In the November issue of Smithsonian magazine, Roy Blount Jr., a Vanderbilt graduate who has written about everything from the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup to the streets of New Orleans, details the challenge of bringing Abraham Lincoln’s presidency to the big screen in Stephen Spielberg’s new film, Lincoln.

November 16, 2012 Novelist, essayist, physicist, MIT professor, and Memphis native Alan Lightman will make an appearance at the First Unitarian Church of Memphis on November 16th. His lecture topic, “The Physicist as Humanist: Science, Art, and Religion,” speaks to the complex interplay between science and metaphysics that are at the heart of Lightman’s most recent book, Mr g: A Novel about the Creation.

November 9, 2012 Sewanee graduate and author of the acclaimed essay collection Pulphead John Jeremiah Sullivan has written a new essay about his reluctant adventures in massage and other spa treatments, which ranged from a biodynamic facial/massage to the application of Tibetan singing bowls. On assignment from The New York Times Magazine, where he is a contributing writer, Sullivan addresses his discomfort with being touched by strangers, only to be surprised by his response to the bodywork.