The Messenger 03.26.08

Dr. Norman Lillegard, recipient of the 2007 Cunningham Award at the University of Tennessee at Martin, will deliver an address, “There Has Never Been an Atheist (!!)” — based upon a remark by the 19th Century Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard — at 7:30 p.m. April 3 in Watkins Auditorium of Boling University Center.
Sponsors are Honors Programs and the Department of History, Philosophy and International Studies.
Originally from Boston, Lillegard received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Nebraska. He has been on the faculty of UT Martin since 1989. Lillegard has earned an international reputation as a scholar, particularly on the thought of Søren Kierkegaard. He has published more than 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals and collections of essays, several of which have appeared in translation in various European languages.
He is the author or co-author of four books, including “The Moral Domain,” now in the final stages of publication by Oxford University Press. Lillegard has been an American Scandinavian Fellow and a visiting scholar at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and at Cambridge University in England. He has been an invited lecturer at conferences and colloquia in the United States, England, Sweden, Finland, Latvia and Poland, and has presented papers or served as a commentator at many additional conferences in the US and abroad.
In the fall of 2008 he will be an invited professor at the University of the Nationalities in Beijing, China.
A past president of the Tennessee Philosophical Associ-ation, Lillegard recently completed service as the president of the Søren Kierkegaard Society. He has also been the society’s representative to the American Philosophical Association.
In addition to membership in various philosophical societies, he is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Association of Teaching Theologians (Lutheran) and the Society of Anglican and Lutheran Theologians.
In addition to the Cunningham Award, Lillegard has been twice honored by UT Martin students with the Outstanding Educator Award. Lillegard is also an ordained Lutheran minister, who spent 12 years in parish ministry prior to assuming his position at UT Martin.
“Honors Programs applauds and appreciates the support of Chancellor Tom Rakes in continuing the new tradition of including a member of the UT Martin faculty in the Academic Speakers Program,” said Dr. Dan McDonough, Honors Programs director. “Norman Lillegard is an outstanding member of the faculty, one who not only has established an international reputation as a scholar, but has made a name for himself as an outstanding teacher and mentor from whom students learn not only the class material, but how to think creatively and independently.”
For more information, contact McDonough at (731) 881-7436.