Join us for virtually to hear Eric Gardner, in conversation with AAS Counselor Derrick Spires, discuss his most recent book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Civil War and Reconstruction.
Eric Gardner is Chair of the English Department at Saginaw Valley State University. Author of two prize-winning monographs--Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature (2009) and Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture (2015)--he has also edited five books and published a wide range of shorter work on nineteenth-century African American literature and culture. A founding convenor of Just Teach One: Early African American Print and an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society, he has won recognition from organizations ranging from the Saginaw County NAACP to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
AAS Counselor, Derrick R. Spires is a John and Patricia Cochran Scholar of Inclusive Excellence and Associate Professor of English at the University of Delaware, where he specializes in early Black print culture, citizenship studies, and African American intellectual history. He is curator of "Black Print African American Writing, 1773-1910," on display at Cornell University's Kroch Library through July.