This year, our Haines Lecturer will be the professor and critic Scott Newstok. He will deliver the 30th Haines Lecture, entitled, "How to Think Like Shakespeare (and Other Humans)," on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023 at 4:30 p.m. in Convocation Hall. 

 

This year's Lecturer

Scott Newstok is Professor of English and Founding Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College. An award-winning teacher, he has published a scholarly edition of Kenneth Burke’s Shakespeare criticism; a monograph on early modern English epitaphs; a collection of essays on Macbeth and race (co-edited with Ayanna Thompson); a posthumous edition of Michael Cavanagh's Paradise Lost: A Primer; and, most recently, How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education. He’s currently editing Michel de Montaigne’s essays on education, in a new version by award-winning translator Tess Lewis; and co-authoring (with John Guillory) an archival history of the cultural technique of “close reading.”

History of the Haines Lecture

Behind the quiet mien of Stacy Haines lived a great enthusiasm for language, ideas, and the of the mind - an enthusiasm he joyfully shared with his wife Peggy.

Having discovered Sewanee through their son, who was graduated in 1966 with a major in English, Stacy and Peggy moved here when he retired from a career with Sears, Roebuck & Company in Chicago. From the time of their arrival in this community, their home became a place of hospitality for aspiring and accomplished readers and writers. This series of lectures and readings, funded permanently by gifts in Stacy's memory from his family and friends, and administered by the College Department of English, stands as a natural and proper extension of the man and his interests.

Stacy Allen Haines
1919 - 1983

Past Haines Lecturers, Poets, and Writers
  • 2022 - Natasha Trethewey
  • 2021 - Alice McDermott
  • 2018 - Wendy Wall
  • 2017 - Marilyn Nelson
  • 2016 - Danielle Evans
  • 2015 - John Lahr
  • 2014 - Charles Martin
  • 2013 - Jay Parini
  • 2010 - J. Paul Hunter
  • 2009 - Anthony Esolen
  • 2008 - Ann Patchett
  • 2007 - Marjorie Garber
  • 2006 - Geoffrey Wolff
  • 2006 - Andrew Delbanco
  • 2005 - Lawrence Lipking
  • 2004 - James Wood
  • 2002 - Barry Hannah
  • 2001 - Andrew Hudgins
  • 2000 - Paul Muldoon
  • 1999 - Robert Pinsky
  • 1998 - Denis Donoghue
  • 1997 - Madison Jones
  • 1996 - Sir Frank Kermode
  • 1993 - X. J. Kennedy
  • 1990 - Tim O'Brien
  • 1989 - Robert Pack
  • 1988 - Arthur Kinney
  • 1988 - Alan Cheuse
  • 1986 - Anthony Evan Hecht