Cate Denial is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History, Chair of the History department, and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, USA. A 2018-2021 Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Cate is the winner of the American Historical Association’s 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching award. 

Cate is the author of several articles on teaching and learning, including ‘A Pedagogy of Kindness,’ in the online journal, Hybrid Pedagogy. 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). Her recent book ‘A Pedagogy of Kindness‘ was published with the University of Oklahoma Press: Home in 2024.