Eric Gardner’s teaching and learning interests center on a range of issues in African American literature and culture as well as methods for literary study, with emphasis on the praxis of literary history. After taking his doctorate at the University of Illinois, he began his career at Saginaw Valley State, where he has taught and served various administrative roles.  His research focuses on nineteenth-century African American writers and activists and has been recognized with, among other awards, an NEH Fellowship (2012-2013) and an NEH Summer Stipend (2005). His first monograph Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature (UP of Mississippi 2009) won the 2010 Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize and was named a Choice “Outstanding Academic Title.” His second monograph Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature and Periodical Culture (Oxford UP, 2015) studies the weekly newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Civil War era.  It won the 2017 Research Society for American Periodicals Book Prize. He has also edited three books as well as a special issue of the journal American Periodicals; his shorter work has appeared in journals like PMLA, American Literary History, Legacy, and African American Review. He is a convener of the Just Teach One: Early African American Print project and a coeditor of American Periodicals.