DENNIS, Michael 1967-

PERSONAL: Born January 27, 1967, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; son of Frank (a business owner) and Catherine Dennis; married; wife's name Melanie; children: Michael Thomas. Education: Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada), Ph.D., 1996.

ADDRESSES: Office—Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia B4P 2R6, Canada.

CAREER: Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, assistant professor, 1999–.

MEMBER: Historical Society, Popular Culture Association, Southern Historical Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright scholar, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Lessons in Progress: State Universities and Progressivism in the New South, 1880–1920, University of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 2001.

Luther P. Jackson and a Life for Civil Rights, University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 2004.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Global Dixie: The South in the Transnational Era; research on youth and social activism in the 1990s.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael Dennis told CA: "I suppose the leading motivation for my writing, at least for my first book, was career advancement. But on a more profound level, writing has helped me to resolve issues, problems, and curiosities that I cannot satisfactorily resolve through class discussions and introspection. On another level, and one that has become more prominent lately, there is my determination to tell the stories and uncover the experiences of those forgotten in conventional histories. I hope my work can be considered as more than histories of the marginal, but also as conversations with those who still have a tremendous amount to teach us.

"My work has been influenced by Fitzhugh Brundage, Eric Foner, George Frederickson, and Thomas Merton.

"In my writing process, I immerse myself in the research and begin to write as soon as possible. I use mental outlines that shift as my conclusions change and as the research guides me.

"I am inspired by an interest in the intellectual history of the South, in progressivism and its impact on the region, and in the paradoxes of Woodrow Wilson, and by a need to understand who and what shaped the early civil rights movement."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Journal of Southern History, February, 2003, W. Bruce Leslie, review of Lessons in Progress: State Universities and Progressivism in the New South, 1880–1920, p. 207.