Historian and Award-Winning Educator
Catherine (Cate) Denial, Ph.D. is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. A winner of the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award, Denial has served as a member of the Educational Advisory Committee of the Digital Library of America, as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, and as a Learned Scholar for the National Historic Landmarks division of the National Park Service. Denial currently sits on the board of Commonplace: A Journal of Early American Life. She has held an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellowship from the American Philosophical Society, and she is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society.
From 2001 to 2011 Denial served as the Lead Historian for Bringing History Home, a professional development program for K-12 educators funded by $3m from the U.S. Department of Education. Denial’s new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness argues that higher education needs to get aggressively and determinedly kind. A Pedagogy of Kindness is about attending to justice, believing people, and believing in people. It’s a transformational discipline.
As creator and director of the Bright Institute at Knox College, Denial oversees a program which supports 13 faculty from liberal arts schools across the United States in their teaching and research for three years, while providing them with $10,500 in research funds and convening an annual summer seminar. From 2022 to 2023, she was PI on a $150,000 grant awarded to Knox College by the Mellon Foundation, bringing together thirty-six participants from across higher education in the United States to explore “Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care in the Academy After COVID-19.” Denial is also a pedagogical consultant who works with individuals, departments, and institutions in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, and Australia.
Denial has convened both general and history-specific workshops for faculty and staff at dozens of colleges and universities in the United States, as well as Monash University in Australia, and the University of Nottingham and Kings College, London in the United Kingdom. She has presented on pedagogy at the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians’ annual meeting, and the Illinois History and Social Science Teachers’ Conference, as well as publishing in Syllabus, The History Teacher, and Teaching History: A Journal of Methods. Denial has acted as a global pedagogical consultant for OneHE and has written for Inside Higher Ed and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She is proud to have written content for the 11th grade social studies curriculum for the New York City Department of Education and acted as a historical consultant for the New-York Historical Society.
Denial’s historical scholarship focuses on the experiences of marriage, divorce, pregnancy, and childbirth among early nineteenth-century Ojibwe people and the missionaries who lived among them. Her article, “ ‘Mother of All The Living’: Motherhood, Religion, and Political Culture at the Ojibwe Village of Fond du Lac, 1835-1839,” appeared in Early American Studies, and built on the work of Denial’s first book, Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country (2013). Her current project is a new interpretation of the life of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and her life among the Ojibwe and fur trade cultures of Sault Ste. Marie.
As creator and director of the Bright Institute at Knox College, Denial oversees programming for successive cohorts of 13 professors of American history before 1848 from liberal arts colleges across the United States. Each cohort of fellows attends an intensive seminar each summer for three years and receives $10,5000 of research funds to advance their teaching and research agendas.
Praise for Cate Denial
“Dr. Catherine Denial champions humanities skills (archival research, close reading, writing and revision) and simultaneously shows how these are essential tools for their non-academic lives, for students and teachers alike. She is the very spirit of generosity and models the kind of collegiality that higher education desperately needs at this moment.”
—Christian Crouch, Dean of Graduate Studies, Bard College
“Cate thoughtfully helped our faculty grapple with the modern college student by understanding their perspective and designing courses to reflect it.”
—Dave Wyrtzen, Associate Director for Faculty Training & Outreach,
Rutgers University
“Cate’s work with our faculty was spot on! She has a wonderfully approach style yet pushes folks to really think about these matters carefully. What an excellent conversation!”
—Erin Spence, Office of the Chancellor, University of Minnesota Rochester
“Dr. Cate Denial was the Fall 2023 keynote speaker for our Kindness Initiative, a year of programming inspired by hearing her talk at the AAC&U conference on General Education and Assessment. She was a pleasure to host and a very effective and unflappable speaker and workshop leader. Our investment in Cate’s visit was well worth it, and we hope to have her back.”
—Lauren Igraham, Vice-Provost for Curriculum
and New Program Development at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
“Cate is a wonderful speaker and facilitator. Our faculty raved about her morning session with us, and it continues to be a topic of conversation across campus as we begin the semester. In our current higher ed environment, Cate’s ideas and strategies for embodying a Pedagogy of Kindness are more important than ever. She is a delight to work with, tailors her material to her audience, and is generous with both her insights and materials. I recommend her enthusiastically!”
—Kevin Gannon Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence, and Professor of History, at Queens University, Charlotte, North Carolina
“Cate Denial is the real deal doing the real work of helping to create a more humane and inclusive higher education in service of a better world. Her words and actions align. She does not shy away from hard conversations. Rather, she turns toward them with curiosity and kindness and helps her learners to do the same. I am a better educator, person, and friend for having Cate in my life. I highly recommend her as a speaker who will help you to dig past the surface into the depths of the real work that is in desperate need of our attention and time.”
—Karen Costa, author, adjunct faculty member
and faculty development facilitator
“Cate provided concrete strategies for making our classrooms more welcoming for students with clarity, kindness. She helped us reflect on our current practices and consider if we are approaching our students with negative assumptions and how to re-orient our thinking for a more effective learning environment.”
—Stacy Duffield, North Dakota State University
“Cate is an engaging presenter who engaged our faculty in highly interactive ways. She is personable, relatable, and approachable; our faculty asked her many thoughtful questions about her work, and she provided equally thoughtful and meaningful responses. I wish that all of our trainings were as well-prepared and presented as Cate’s.”
—Brandon Morgan, Ph.D. Associate Dean,
School of Liberal Arts Central New Mexico Community College
“Having Cate on our campus was so refreshing. She brought an important perspective to our campus and provided the expertise and experience to encourage and inspire others to challenge their own assumptions about students and pedagogy. I would love to have her back and try to get even more of our faculty to listen to her.”
—Brenda Kauffman, Flagler College
