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Dr.
Eric Gardner Professor and Chair,
English
office: Brown 330 email: gardner@svsu.edu phone: 989.964.4037 snail: |
Eric Gardner teaches a
wide range of courses in American literature/culture and currently chairs SVSU's
English Department. He attended the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (M.A., Ph.D.) and Illinois
Wesleyan University (B.A.) after growing up in Peotone, Illinois.
Dr. Gardner's research focuses on nineteenth-century African American writers and activists. His latest book-length work Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West (UP of Mississippi 2007) recovers the work of "Semper Fidelis," a columnist for the San Francisco Elevator (a Reconstruction-era Black newspaper).
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 Lucy Delaney, William Greenly, Chloe Russel, Frank J. Webb,
Mary Webb, and Harriet Wilson. His edited anthology Major
Voices: The Drama of Slavery (Toby Press 2005) shares a rich range of
early American drama about slavery including plays by Black writers like William
Wells Brown and Pauline Hopkins. His on-going research projects include further
work on Jennie Carter and the early Black press as well as studies of nineteenth-century
African American literary communities in "unexpected places" like
Indiana, California, and antebellum St. Louis.
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; among the Gardner kids' current favorite books, he recommends Julie Danneberg and Judy Love's First Year Letters.
A wonderful tool for books and more is available through WorldCat:
University
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