2027 Spring Conference for Wisconsin Educators

Catherine (Cate) Denial

A Pedagogy of Kindness

Thursday, April 15, 2027

Cate Denial, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Center for Learning Innovation at the University of Minnesota-Rochester. Her opening plenary emanates from her latest book, A Pedagogy of Kindness (2024) published by University of Oklahoma Press. Cate argues that higher education needs to be aggressively and determinedly kind. A Pedagogy of Kindness is about attending to justice, believing people, and believing in people. Kindness, she writes, is a transformational discipline. Cate’s first book was Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country (2013) published by Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Cate earned an M.A. Degree in History at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before completing a Ph.D. in History at University of Iowa. She received a B.A. Degree in American Studies at the University of Nottingham, England. She was also a non-degree-seeking student in Anishinaabemowin at University of Northern Michigan.

A winner of the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award, she has served as a member of the Educational Advisory Committee of the Digital Public Library of America, and as a Learned Scholar for the National Historic Landmarks division of the National Park Service. Cate 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 Cate 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. From 2022 to 2023, Cate 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.” She is also a pedagogical consultant who works with individuals, departments, and institutions in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, and Australia.