Professor Eric Gardner, a tireless and influential scholar of Black print, its history, and its archives, will deliver the 2025 Kane Lecture in the Department of English on Thurs., March 27, titled “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Right Here, Right Now.” Drawn in part from his forthcoming book, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction, his lecture will address Harper’s years living in Columbus, Ohio. The lecture will be followed by Q&A and a brief reception.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was a poet, author, and lecturer. She was an influential abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer who traveled the United States and Canada for many years as a lecturer and organizer promoting the causes of anti-slavery and women’s rights, advocating for the inclusion of African American women in both causes. She published widely, writing poetry, novels, and short stories focused on issues of feminism, racism, and classism. Harper’s “The Two Offers,” published in the Anglo-African Magazine in 1859, is the first short story published by an African American woman.
Eric Gardner is the 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, most recently the volume on Reconstruction for Cambridge’s African American Literature in Transition series, and published a wide range of articles in scholarly journals, edited collections, and key reference works. He was awarded a pair of Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a “Regional Hero” award from the Saginaw County NAACP. Prof. Gardner chairs the English Department at Saginaw Valley State University.
This lecture is free and open to the public. The nearest visitor parking is in the Ohio Union South Garage, 1759 North High Street.
