Gretchen teaches across ecosystems and disciplines, academic and community settings, cross-pollinating community-engaged environments.
From students' perspectives
(college & university courses):
"This course was incredible. Professor Henderson challenged me to think about the world and writing in a completely different way than I ever have." ~ Graduate Student evaluation from The University of Texas at Austin
"I gave Professor Henderson all high overall ratings, but she truly deserves amazing, incredible or a box to check to say that she is the most phenomenal professor at this university." ~ Undergraduate Student evaluation from Georgetown University
"Without a doubt the best teacher I've ever had, and I mean that most sincerely." ~ Graduate Student evaluation from the University of Utah
"This class was incredibly effective at introducing me to a realm of learning at MIT that I had no idea existed. REALLY wonderful class!" ~ Undergraduate Student evaluation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Community-based courses:
"What an amazing teacher Gretchen is. I don’t know how she does what she does ... She taught me more about writing in five days than I’ve learned in a life time." ~ Student evaluation from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation
"Gretchen's inspiring course was more than a workshop. It was a whole stimulus package!" ~ Student at the University of Arizona Poetry Center
"Gretchen’s gentle guiding hand, superb exercises and choice words of wisdom are something I would like to cast into gold and wear around my neck like a talisman.”
~ Student from Seasonal Oasis Sabbatical
"Gretchen’s breadth of knowledge, enthusiasm, professional supportiveness very much appreciated—Amazing in all categories." ~ Student evaluation from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop
Teaching
Gretchen has taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels for two decades and is the incoming Spence L. Wilson Distinguished Professor in Humanities at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. With writing at the heart of her practice, she has taught in departments of English, Creative Writing, Environmental Humanities, Comparative Media, Art History and Museum Studies, and Social Work, most recently at the University of Texas at Austin and previously at Georgetown University, University of Utah, MIT, Knox College, along with community-based courses through the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, University of Arizona Poetry Center, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Barnard College's Center for Research on Women, and elsewhere. She is frequently invited as a visiting writer/artist/scholar.
With a commitment to public humanities, her classes often go beyond the classroom, from special collections to landscape art and architecture to environmental and health sciences. Field trips have ranged from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and curated spaces around Boston, to the Smithsonian Museums and National Press Club in Washington, DC, to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (including Nancy Holt’s remote Sun Tunnels) to state parks in the Sierra Nevada of California, and countries internationally engaging exhibits, performances, and cultural arts.
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Find Gretchen's recent public workshops at the University of Arizona Poetry Center on Relational Ecologies: Writing with a More than Human World ("Writing with Water, Writing with Fire, Writing with Earth, and Writing with Air") and at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (former Mellon estate in Virginia) on "Writing the Landscape" and "Literary Ecologies: Reading to Reinhabit the World" along with offerings including the Seasonal Oasis Sabbatical and a wide variety of "Seed Retreats" (Seed Reading & Seed Writing) through the writing-editorial collective Randolph Lundine.
