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.