Illinois Wesleyan University alumnus Eric Gardner recently received the 2010 Earl L. Warrick Award for Excellence in Research from Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU), where he is a professor of English. The award is given each year to one of SVSU’s 300 faculty members whose research maintains the highest quality over a period of time.
A 1989 graduate from Illinois Wesleyan with a degree in English, Gardner is known for his work on 19th-century African-American writers and activists. He is the author of Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth-Century African American Literature (UP of Mississippi, 2009), and has edited several books, including Major Voices: The Drama of Slavery (Toby Press, 2005), which explores the work of African-American playwrights like William Wells Brown and Pauline Hopkins; and Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West (UP of Mississippi, 2007).