Restrictions to Access

The addition of July 2003 is CLOSED pending screening for student records.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the John W. Dixon Papers #4510, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Provenance

Received from John W. Dixon, Jr., through the UNC-CH Dept. of Religious Studies and University Archives in March 1988 and July 2003 (Acc. 99583).

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Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Art and religion--North Carolina.
• Civil rights movements--North Carolina.
• College teachers--North Carolina--Political activity.
• Dixon, John W.
• Education, Higher--North Carolina.
• North Carolina--Race relations.
• Segregation in higher education--North Carolina.
• University of North Carolina (1793-1962)--Faculty--History--20th century.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--Faculty.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dept. of Religion.
• Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975--Protest movements--North Carolina.

John Wesley Dixon, Jr., was born in Richmond, Va., on 18 August 1919. He married Vivian S. Dixon. In 1941, he graduated from Emory and Henry College with a B.A. in history and English. He studied history at the University of Bristol, England, 1938-1939, and at Columbia University in the summer of 1950. In 1953, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in the interdepartmental program called the Committee on Social Thought.

Dixon was an instructor at Michigan State University, 1950-1952. He taught at Emory University, 1952-1957; Dickinson College, 1957-1960; and Florida Presbyterian College, 1960-1963. In 1963, he joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a professor of religion and art. From 1952 to 1957, on a leave of absence from Emory University, he served as the executive director of the Faculty Christian Fellowship of the National Council of Churches.

Dixon is the author of numerous works, including Form and Reality: Art as Communication (1957), Nature and Grace in Art (1964), Art and the Theological Imagination (1976), and The Physiology of Faith: A Theory of Theological Relativity (1979).

The collection includes correspondence, writings, and other items of professor of religion and art  John W. Dixon. Correspondence deals with academic and scholarly matters such as the publication of various works by Dixon and presentations he made. There also are letters and related items concerning Dixon's efforts to organize faculty opposition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to the war in Vietnam, his efforts to improve race relations on campus in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his ideas about religious faith and higher education. Writings are chiefly published and unpublished essays by Dixon concerning various dimensions of religion and art and issues in higher education. An addition of July 2003 concerns departmental affairs, teaching, and Dixon's work with graduate students.