Wilmington University Professor Michael Dixon

Wilmington University History adjunct Michael Dixon teaches students how to conduct investigations into a well-hidden past.

In Michael Dixon’s case, he was indeed made by history. For him, even from childhood, history has been and continues to be his life.

But not history of the high and mighty, though Dixon, an author, writer, speaker and Wilmington University history adjunct, has encountered presidents and ambassadors on his ongoing journey through the past. Instead, he says, his focus “is the history of understudied people, everyday people, those you don’t find in textbooks or chapters of 19th-century history.”

In other words, the rest of us.

Dixon says his purpose is to encourage our interest in local historical events and places, and help preserve that knowledge and, in doing so, create a bridge between past and present for us to enjoy and learn.

His knowledge of several subjects is extensive — Prohibition, women’s suffrage, civil rights, the Cold War, the C&D Canal, the Mason-Dixon Line, the building of the Conowingo Dam (the construction that cost the lives of at least 20 people) — and also subjects many have shied away from in the past or that were simply forgotten or ignored, like unsolved murders of small-town police officers or lynchings in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is always interested in learning more about topics he comes across in his many travels around the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond.

The article continues on WilmU, the Official Magazine of Wilmington University

professor michael dixon
Professor Michael Dixon at the Old State House in Dover. A photo from Wilmington University Public Affairs Office.

Finding the Past While Strolling Delaware Communities With a Class

The Central Hotel about 1914 in Delaware City

Communities all around Delaware make excellent learning laboratories for classes that are seeking to increase historial-thinking and understand the evolution of our 21st century environment.  With that in mind, I often take undergraduates out for fieldwork, especially this time of year as autumn gets underway on the Peninsula and the days are ideal for strolling.  The focus of these experiential learning exercises is to demonstrate how to understand the history that is all around by showing them where to look, what to look for, and how to examine the visual evidence.

So we spent this morning in Delaware City considering how physical, economic, cultural and political forces shaped growth and development of the quaint little town at the eastern end of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.  This applied research in a classroom without walls gave us the perfect place to gather evidence and talk about how and why this place looks the way it does.  In preparation for the trip that explored the physical and built landscape, technological changes and demography, we scrutinized photographs, maps and other primary document that served as the foundation for our investigation.

Next week, we are going to venture down below the canal to look at two other towns, Middletown and Odessa, for a comparative case study.  Together these towns provide the perfect laboratory for comparing and contracting how and why development of three Delaware communities took place and analyze the different paths they took over the centuries.

The Central Hotel in Delaware City today.

Teaching New Delaware History Course at Wilmington University This Fall

Delaware map from the David Rumsey Collection.
Delaware map from the David Rumsey Collection.

Wilmington University has asked me to teach a new course in Delaware History.  It runs during the Fall Semester and I’m excited to be the professor for this recent addition to the University catalog.This is going to be an  active learning course.  As we examine the transformations that have taken place in First State, from the period of discovery to the present, we will have learning labs and hands-on history walking tours.  Throughout the semster, I will incorporate practical fieldwork into our learning strategies.

This will be an engaging and informative course that explores the past that is all around us in Delaware.