The Trent Teaching Commons is pleased to introduce a new event series, Beyond the Page. This conversational series explores recent scholarship in teaching and learning and invites the author to share the motivations and experiences behind their work. We invite you to read their work in advance and join us as we go beyond their written words to learn more about their teaching approaches, successes, and challenges.
Dr. Catherine (Cate) Denial
Cate is the author of A Pedagogy of Kindness (2024) and will be joining us virtually on October 6, 2026 as the inaugural speaker in our new series. You can learn more about this series and register for the event here.
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, Cate 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. 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 $3 m from the U.S. Department of Education. Cate’s new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness argues that higher education needs to getaggressively 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, Cate oversees a program that 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.” Cate is also a pedagogical consultant who works with individuals, departments, and institutions in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, and Australia.
Dr. Jesse Stommel
Jesse is the author of Undoing the Grade (2023) and will join us virtually for our Beyond the Page series on November 11, 2026. You can learn more about this series and register for this event here.
Jesse Stommel, Ph.D. is currently a faculty member in the Writing Program at University of Denver. He is also co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and Digital Pedagogy Lab. He has a PhD from University of Colorado Boulder. He is author of Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop and co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy.
Jesse is a documentary filmmaker and teaches courses about pedagogy, film, digital studies, and composition. Jesse experiments relentlessly with learning interfaces, both digital and analog, and his research focuses on higher education pedagogy, critical digital pedagogy, and assessment. He’s got a rascal pup, Emily, a clever cat, Loki, and a badass daughter, Hazel. He’s online at jessestommel.com and on Twitter @Jessifer.
Jesse has 12 new publications since 2020, including three pieces in Academe: "Care is a Practice; Care is Pedagogical," "The Human Work of Higher Education Pedagogy," and "Bad Data Are Not Better Than No Data" as well as an edited collection, Critical Digital Pedagogy: A Collection. He was recently interviewed for stories in New Scientist, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Chemical & Engineering News, and more. In 2019, a feature about him and his work appeared in the print and online versions of The Chronicle of Higher Education. In the last two years, he's given over two dozen keynotes, including at The Teaching Professor Conference, at ASU, at the "Against Surveillance Teach-in," and more.
In 2021, he opened PlayForge, a game store with a makerspace and classroom in Old Town Littleton with his husband (and help from then 4-year-old Hazel).