Dr. Eric Gardner Professor and Chair, English Saginaw Valley State University   office: Brown 317 email: gardner@svsu.edu phone: 989.964.4037 snail: Department of English Saginaw Valley State University 7400 Bay Road University Center, Michigan 48710

Eric Gardner teaches a wide range of courses in American literature/culture and currently chairs SVSU's English Department. After growing up in Peotone, Illinois, he attended Illinois Wesleyan University (B.A.) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (M.A., Ph.D.).

Dr. Gardner's research focuses on nineteenth-century African American writers and activists. His latest book Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature is due out from the University Press of Mississippi in October 2009 and argues for a large-scale remapping of early Black literature through case studies of antebellum St. Louis, antebellum Indiana, Reconstruction-era San Francisco, and a range of Civil War and post-bellum sites in Ohio and New Jersey tied to the Philadelphia-based Christian Recorder. He has also edited Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West (Mississippi 2007), which recovers the work of "Semper Fidelis," a columnist for the Reconstruction-era San Francisco Elevator, as well as Major Voices: The Drama of Slavery (Toby Press 2005), which shares a rich range of early American drama about slavery including plays by Black writers like William Wells Brown and Pauline Hopkins.

An SVSU Braun Fellow, Gardner has also written on African American literature and culture for journals like New England Quarterly, Legacy, and African American Review; essay collections like Everyday eBay (Routledge 2006) and Harriet Wilson's New England (UP of New England 2007); and reference books like the Encyclopedia of African American Literature, African American Lives, and the African American National Biography. He has done key biographical and critical work on figures like Philip A. Bell, Lucy Delaney, William Greenly, Chloe Russel, Elisha Weaver, Frank J. Webb, Mary Webb, and Harriet Wilson. His on-going research projects include further work on the early Black press and on nineteenth-century African American literary communities and individuals in "unexpected places."

Active in campus life, Gardner served, at various times prior to his 2006 election as Chair of SVSU's largest department, as SVSU's First-Year Writing Coordinator, Writing Center Coordinator, General Education Committee member, Faculty Association Executive Board member, and co-editor of SVSU's NCA/HLC 2004 Self-Study. He is also the former Vice-Chair of the Library Board of Midland, Michigan, and he is a life member of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW) and the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature in the United States (MELUS).

He cheers for, in no particular order, Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, Indigo Girls, the Weepies, Steve Earle, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Alzheimer's Association, the Boston Red Sox, the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project, and, of course, all of his students.

He encourages you to get informed; try the Alternative Press Center, the nearest library (SVSU students: www.svsu.edu/library), and National Public Radio, for starters. He also thinks parents should read with their kids everyday.

A wonderful tool for books and more is available through WorldCat:

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