Dean L. May

Dean Lowe May (April 6, 1938 – May 6, 2003) was an American academic, author and documentary filmmaker and professor of History at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. May specialized in nineteenth- and twentieth-century social and cultural history of the American West through the study of community and family. He taught American studies as a Fulbright guest professor at the University of Bonn, Germany and Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. May was a member of the Utah State Board of History, editor of the Journal of Mormon History (1982–1985), and served as president of the Mormon History Association in 2002. May was honored as a Pioneer of Progress in Historic and Cultural Arts by the Days of 47 Celebration Committee for the State of Utah in 2002.

May received a master's degree in history from Harvard University in 1967. Completing his Ph.D. at Brown University in 1974, he focused on the economics and history associated with the Great Depression and the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. His thesis was entitled "From New Deal to New Economics: The Response of Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and Marriner S. Eccles to the Recession of 1937."

May's training in economics and history led to a position with the Historical Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1974, where he worked with Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington. During 1974, May was also a fellow at the Newberry Library and Community History Institute, studying quantitative methods which he used in his studies of Kanab, Utah and other western communities. In collaboration with Arrington he revised and expanded a long manuscript by the late Feramorz Y. Fox into the book Building the City of God: Community and Cooperation Among the Mormons. The work examined the social importance of community and discussed unity, individuality, and human imperfection and failure.

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