Director

Cate Denial

Bright Institute Director
Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Chair of the Department of History at Knox College

Cate Denial is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. A Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Cate is the winner of the American Historical Association’s 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching award, a former member of the Digital Public Library of America‘s Educational Advisory Board, and sits on the editorial board of Commonplace: A Journal of Early American Life. Cate's new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness, will be published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2024. Her historical research has examined the early nineteenth-century experience of pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing in Upper Midwestern Ojibwe and missionary cultures, research that grew from Cate’s previous book, Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country (2013). Cate is a member of the Johnston Family/Ojibwe History Advisors board for The Ojibwe Muzzeniegun Digital Edition.