Eric Gardner
LightNews LightNews
profgardner.bsky.social
Eric Gardner
@profgardner.bsky.social
310 followers 290 following 97 posts
Proud geek, dad, and husband. Teacher and literary historian with emphasis on Black print culture--esp. C19 and African American women writers. Opinions my own.
Posts Replies Media Videos
profgardner.bsky.social
one term is just never enough
a stack of books, spines facing: from top, Becky Chambers' A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Chain-Gain All-Stars, Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons, Sarah Gailey's Upright Women Wanted, Charlotte Nicole Davis' The Good Luck Girls, Gish Jen's The Resisters, Nino Cipri's Finna, Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police, Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Donna Barba Higuera's The Last Cuentista
November 1, 2025 at 6:07 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
The footnotes I struggled with most in my new book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction (#24 & #28) are in Chapter 1, and THAT is the chapter that is currently freely available to everyone. Book info in the comments. See academic.oup.com/book/60645/c...
This photograph offers a three-quarters length portrait of African American activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper standing behind a chair with her hands on the chair’s back. Her body is turned to her right, but she faces viewers directly. Her dress is dark, with a bustle skirt, darker sleeves, and a row of buttons down the front of a skirted vest that matches the fabric of the dress skirt. Harper used this photograph as a frontispiece in some of her later books.
September 26, 2025 at 9:50 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
A birthday present for Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s 200th: you can now read Chapter 1 of my new book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction online for free for a limited time! Please share widely. Book info in the comments. Check out: academic.oup.com/book/60645/c...
The cover of Eric Gardner’s book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction. On a blue background, the largest portion of the cover reproduces a C19 engraving of African American author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper from William Still’s 1872 The Underground Rail Road. The portrait shows her head and upper body. She is wearing traveling clothes, and she is in three-quarters profile, facing to the left. Her hair is pulled back in her signature chignon, and she looks ahead with wisdom and determination. The engraving lines can be seen throughout the portrait, especially on her skin and her dress. A mostly-opaque yellow rectangle rests perhaps two-thirds of the way down the cover below Harper’s chin and neck. Here, inside a thin brown border, the words “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s” are offered in brown all caps, followed by the words “Civil War and Reconstruction” in smaller white all caps, followed by a partial centered line, followed by the author’s name in smaller brown all caps.
September 24, 2025 at 3:57 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is 200 today! @c19americanists.bsky.social @digblk.bsky.social @ccp-org.bsky.social @blkgrlpoet.bsky.social @profgabrielle.bsky.social @npr.org She’s just as fabulous, relevant, and fiery now as she was in C19! For a sample, see commonplace.online/article/vol-...
September 24, 2025 at 12:31 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
After a decade of work, here is the unboxing of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction! Cloth ISBN 9780197804490. Use discount code AUFLY30 to get 30% off at global.oup.com/academic/pro...
September 17, 2025 at 12:23 AM
profgardner.bsky.social
The digital version of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction is now available for folks who have Oxford Academic Access! Online ISBN 9780197804520; print (forthcoming) ISBN 9780197804490. See academic.oup.com/book/60645
The cover of Eric Gardner’s book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction. On a blue background, the largest portion of the cover reproduces a C19 engraving of African American author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper from William Still’s 1872 The Underground Rail Road. The portrait shows her head and upper body. She is wearing traveling clothes, and she is in three-quarters profile, facing to the left. Her hair is pulled back in her signature chignon, and she looks ahead with wisdom and determination. The engraving lines can be seen throughout the portrait, especially on her skin and her dress. A mostly-opaque yellow rectangle rests perhaps two-thirds of the way down the cover below Harper’s chin and neck. Here, inside a thin brown border, the words “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s” are offered in brown all caps, followed by the words “Civil War and Reconstruction” in smaller white all caps, followed by a partial centered line, followed by the author’s name in smaller brown all caps.
August 29, 2025 at 11:08 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
Proofs are proofed. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction is on track for 1 Oct release from Oxford UP. The book wouldn’t exist w/o support from the NEH & so many librarians & scholars committed to the fact that Black history is American history. We still have so much to learn.
Excerpts from proofs of the title page of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Civil War and Reconstruction by Eric Gardner and of the Contents page. The latter lists: Acknowledgments, page ix; Chapter 1, Strangers and Neighbors: Recovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Life and Work, page 1; Chapter 2, Origin Stories, page 29; Chapter 3, Reconstructing an Abolitionist Voice, page 66; Chapter 4, “Go on”: Harper’s Challenges to Reconstruction, page 94; Chapter 5, “Lay the whole foundation anew”: Harper in the Thick of Reconstruction, page 134; Chapter 6, The Fifteenth Amendment and Epic Struggles, page 176; Chapter 7, Endings and Not, page 221; Notes, page 263; Works Cited, page 295; Index, page 305.
July 6, 2025 at 3:13 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
Per Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, remembering Black soldiers who “marched to the front, faithful to the country when others were faithless—who were rallying around the flag when Rebels were trampling it under feet; true to the country when she wanted a friend.” See commonplace.online/article/vol-...
Detail from the front page of the 10 October 1863 issue of the Weekly Anglo-African (a Black newspaper published in New York) that shows Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s poem “The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth,” commemorating the efforts of the famed all-Black Civil War regiment. For more on the poem including its full text, see https://scholarlyediting.org/2013/editions/aa.18631010.1.html and https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/25194/24963
May 26, 2025 at 1:50 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the sixth of six essays in the exciting forum on Harper in the current issue of Legacy, @brigfield.bsky.social’s breathtaking & visionary “Generational Harper.” muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
An engraving of a head-and-shoulders portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) in three-quarters profile. Wearing traveling clothes and her hair gathered in her signature chignon, she looks with calm determination to the viewer’s left. Originally in William Still's 1872 book The Underground Rail Road.
May 24, 2025 at 5:35 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances E. W. Harper’s birth. Here’s the fifth of six essays in the forum on Harper in the current Legacy, Barbara McCaskill’s wise & rich “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Ethics of Personal Rest and National Restoration”: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
Detail from a photograph of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) featuring her head and shoulders. Her body is turned to the right, but she faces the camera directly, with a calm power. Her hair is pulled back, and she wears a fashionable nineteenth-century traveling dress. Harper use the larger version of this photograph--a three-quarters view of her standing behind a chair--as the frontispiece in several of her later works.
May 23, 2025 at 6:52 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances E. W. Harper’s birth. Here’s the fourth of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current Legacy, Nazera Sadiq Wright’s amazing study of Harper, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, & Black library use & creation: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
Details from two photographs showing individual African American women: at left, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, and, at right, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Both are head and shoulders pictures. Mossell’s body is turned slightly to her right, but she faces the camera slightly to her left. Harper’s body is turned to more to her right, but her face aims directly at us. Both are in fashionable late nineteenth-century dresses. Mossell’s hair is up, and Harper’s is pulled back.
May 22, 2025 at 3:02 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the third of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, Leslie Schwalm’s groundbreaking intro to Harper’s work in Iowa (!) muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
This photograph offers a three-quarters length portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) standing behind a chair with her hands on the chair’s back. Her body is turned to her right, but she faces viewers directly. Her dress is dark, with a bustle skirt, darker sleeves, and a row of buttons down the front of a skirted vest that matches the fabric of the dress skirt. Harper used this photograph as a frontispiece in some of her later books.
May 21, 2025 at 3:09 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the second of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, the powerful “We Need to Speak about Home” by Kristin Moriah @dark-stars.bsky.social: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
A contemporary color photograph of a three-story rowhouse in Philadelphia owned by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper during the last four decades of her life. The front façade is red brick. The first floor features a blue door (at the top of a short set of off-white stairs) and two double hung windows trimmed in white with blue shutters and blue window boxes. Two basement windows made of glass blocks can be see below the first-floor windows. The second and third floor each feature two double hung windows, again with white trim and blue shutters. Off-white lintels matching the front stairs are placed at the top of the door and basement windows and at the top and bottom of the other windows. A small cornice done in blue with yellowish accents tops the structure. This is an end unit and the photograph approaches the structure at an angle, so the end side wall of gray stone is also visible. Various utility wires interrupt the view of parts of the second and third floors. A historical marker—a sign on a tall pole—can be see to the viewer’s right, rising from the red brick sidewalk. The rowhouse immediately to the right is brown brick, separated visually from the Harper home by a white drainage pipe running from the roof to a black base in the sidewalk.
May 20, 2025 at 2:50 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the first of six essays in the forum celebrating & commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, Lois Brown’s stunning & timely “Catalysts for Justice”: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
An engraving of a head-and-shoulders portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) in three-quarters profile. Wearing traveling clothes and her hair gathered in her signature chignon, she looks with calm determination to the viewer’s left. Originally in William Still's 1872 book The Underground Rail Road.
May 19, 2025 at 3:24 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. To help commemorate and celebrate, the current issue of Legacy features a forum on Harper’s life and work. This week, I’ll share each of the six essays; for now, here’s the intro: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
An engraving that offers a head-and-shoulders portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) in three-quarters profile. Wearing traveling clothes and her hair gathered in her signature chignon, she looks with calm determination to the viewer’s left. Originally in William Still's 1872 book The Underground Rail Road.
May 19, 2025 at 3:11 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
Save the NEH! More great books on Black history & culture--these, all aided by the NEH: Courtney Thorsson’s meticulous & beautiful The Sisterhood studies a world-changing community of Black women writers (Morrison, Shange, Jordan & more) @courtneythorsson.bsky.social cup.columbia.edu/book/the-sis...
The cover of Courtney Thorsson’s book The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture. On a sepia background of varying tones, the top of the cover offers the title of the book in large black all caps spread over two lines, with a line between the words. Under another line, the subtitle appears in smaller black letters. Under another line, the author’s name appears in smaller black all caps. The bottom half of the cover is filled with a stunning 1977 picture (again, with sepia tones) of a group of African American women, most wearing coats and smiling, some sitting and some standing. They are Vertamae Grosvenor, Alice Walker, Lori Sharpe, Toni Morrison, June Jordan, Nana Maynard, Ntozake Shange and Audreen Ballard—some of the members of the title group, all women who changed the landscape of American literature.
April 11, 2025 at 2:46 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
Save the NEH! More great books on Black history & culture--these, all aided by the NEH: Derrick R. Spires’s The Practice of Citizenship is an archivally-rich must-read about early Black print but also about what we should be doing now. @drkmttr82.bsky.social www.pennpress.org/978081225080...
The book cover for The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States by Derrick R. Spires. On a light gray background, the top two-thirds of the cover show a matted and framed C19 print; the frame is contemporary brown wood. The shadows around the frame give a three-dimensional effect, as if the frame is resting on the cover. The print is from the American Antislavery Almanac for 1837 and is titled “A Sketch of God’s Description of the ‘Consequence of Emancipation.’” At the right side of the engraving, a tree stands with a sign saying emancipation nailed to it. In its boughs, broken chains and manacles are draped. In the far distance, center, we see what looks like the US Capitol building. In the foreground, a Black man in a long coat holds an open Bible with one hand and has his other hand raised heavenward, index finger pointing up. A Black woman holding a baby and a toddler kneels beside him along with a third young girl (also kneeling). In the mid-ground we see a cabin and a group of African Americans facing the capitol and cheering. The book’s title appears in bold black letters below the frame, the subtitle appears in smaller all caps below the title, and the author’s name in larger all caps appears below the subtitle.
April 5, 2025 at 7:55 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
The daily barrage of evil made me hold back on a cover reveal, but maybe this is the day. Out later in 2025, this book, like 7000+ books & so many other rich projects, would not exist without the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. These stories must be told & we must save the NEH.
The cover of Eric Gardner’s Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction. On a blue background, the largest portion of the cover reproduces a C19 engraving of African American author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper found in William Still’s 1872 The Underground Rail Road. The portrait shows her head and upper body. She is wearing traveling clothes, and she is in three-quarters profile, facing to the left. Her hair is pulled back in her signature chignon, and she looks ahead with wisdom and determination. The engraving lines can be seen throughout the portrait, especially on her skin and her dress. A mostly-opaque yellow rectangle rests perhaps two-thirds of the way down the cover below Harper’s chin and neck. Here, inside a thin brown border, the words “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s” are offered in brown all caps, followed by the words “Civil War and Reconstruction” in smaller white all caps, followed by a partial centered line, followed by the author’s name in smaller brown all caps.
April 4, 2025 at 1:47 AM
profgardner.bsky.social
February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Organize & learn from the past. The Colored Conventions Movement = a great place to begin/recommit: field-making interdisciplinary work treating the archive as a live space. @ccp-org.bsky.social uncpress.org/book/9781469...
The book cover for The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays edited by P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Lynn Patterson. The book’s title in large blue all caps and the subtitle in smaller black italics are superimposed (with some white background added) toward the top of an 1869 sketch by Theo. R. Davis of a session of the National Colored Convention in Washington, DC, held that year. Dozens of African American people are seated in rows of pews in a large church-like meeting space. The view is as if we, too, are entering the hall. In the background—at the front of the hall—two men are behind a pulpit, one standing, one sitting. In the foreground, which is colorized, three women and a man are in the process of taking their seats. The man’s black jacket and one of the women’s blue overdress and dark bonnet are especially striking. At the bottom of the cover, on a strip of black background, the editors’ names appear in small white all caps.
April 1, 2025 at 12:27 AM
profgardner.bsky.social
February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause is magisterial but never forgets that the big picture is composed of many, many individuals. Archivally & conceptually brilliant. @profmsinha.bsky.social yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...
The cover of Manisha Sinha’s book The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. On a white background, the right half of the cover is a reproduction of a C19 engraving showing a US flag on a flagpole done in light red tones. The flag’s rope extends down the pole and ties the wrists of a shirtless African American man above his head to the flagpole and then, further down, ties his calves to the pole in similar fashion. It looks as if he is about to be whipped. The enslaved man (literally bound to the flag) faces toward the left half of the cover, which, at the top, has a laudatory blurb from Ira Berlin in small type, the main title in large blue all caps, the subtitle in smaller black all caps, and the author’s name in similarly-sized blue all caps. The main title and author’s name have a slight serif, while subtitle is sans serif, with the "a" and the "of" in italics.
March 30, 2025 at 11:49 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. I love a good biography & Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement is that & so much more: a deep & nuanced study of a whole world of activism that tells of both the then & the now uncpress.org/book/9780807...
The book cover of Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. The upper third of the cover offers a stunning closeup partial head shot of Ella Baker (an African American woman, here in middle age) speaking done in brown tones, with her name in large white letters superimposed over the bottom portion of the photograph. The bottom two thirds of the cover shares “& the Black Freedom Movement” in large black letters spread over four lines, with the subtitle below in small all caps, followed by the author’s name in larger red letters, and a glowing blurb from Cornell West in much smaller red letters. In the middle third, just off center to the right is a small black and white version of the photograph from which the larger head shot is drawn; this fuller version shows Baker’s head (and hat), torso, and upper arms with an NBC microphone set to hear her.
March 29, 2025 at 11:25 PM
profgardner.bsky.social
February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. No way to do this w/o Darlene Clark Hine, so a fabulous edited collection with John McCluskey Jr: The Black Chicago Renaissance. Short version: Harlem, yes, but don’t forget the Chi. www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p0...
The book cover of Darlene Clark Hine and John McCluskey, Jr.’s edited collection The Black Chicago Renaissance. On a light gray background, the title appears in large type, with “Black Chicago” larger and in bold black and “The” and “Renaissance” in slightly smaller white. At the bottom of the cover, the editors’ names appear in smaller bold black all caps. A thin, tri-color band runs along the left edge of the cover—from the top, first black, then blue, then red. On the cover’s right side, next to the title, we see a detail from Walter Ellison’s stunning 1937 oil on canvas, “Leaving Macon, Georgia,” which shows two African American men talking atop two train cars (one of which is faintly labelled “ICRR”). The center character wears a blue work shirt and a dark blue cap; he is smiling, and a one hand raised to point. The other wears overalls and a hat. In the background, we can see a long pair of roads, with a white crossroads sign.
March 25, 2025 at 1:03 AM
profgardner.bsky.social
February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. The reason Jennifer L. Morgan’s Reckoning with Slavery won such praise? It is *that* good. Early enslaved women’s lives, capitalism, the Middle Passage: required reading on so many issues. www.dukeupress.edu/reckoning-wi...
The cover for Jennifer L. Morgan’s book Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. In a rich combination of blacks and browns, the bottom left portion of the cover has a tall lighter brown triangle background. The author’s name is in small all caps at the bottom, all in the triangle. Higher up, the title appears in red all caps, partially in the triangle, and the subtitle appears in smaller white type just below it, again partially in the triangle. A line of three spaced asterisks beginning near the top runs down to the title, centered; below the subtitle, a line of three more runs down to the author’s name, again centered; a single asterisk appears below the author’s name, again centered. The bulk of the cover is a detail from the stunning oil on canvas, likely from the 1580s, “Portrait of an African Woman Holding a Clock,” attributed to Annibale Carracci. The title woman looks directly at us in a three-quarters view; she is dressed in period European fashion with a thin white shawl over a dark dress. She also wears a beaded necklace, an earring, and a silver circlet in her hair. The title clock is in the foreground and looks like a small imperial tower worked in carved gold, with the clock face on one side turned toward us.
March 24, 2025 at 12:02 AM
profgardner.bsky.social
February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Leslie M. Harris’s In the Shadow of Slavery knocked me over when it came out & the 2024 version has a powerful new afterword. Such a key work for C19 NYC and beyond. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
The book cover of Leslie M. Harris’s In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. The top of the cover begins in black and gradually fades, in the lower half of the cover to a blue-tinted C19 photograph of the Colored Orphan Asylum in NYC that shows several African American children on the grounds and on stairs leading to the building. The vast majority are girls, and they wear the same broad dresses. Those in the foreground are holding hoops, and all are looking at the camera. The book’s title is in the upper half in all caps in varying shades of blue. The author’s name appears below in smaller blue all caps; the phrase “With a New Afterword by the Author” appears in small blue letters between. The subtitle appears in red-orange italics with a border right center.
March 23, 2025 at 2:40 AM
profgardner.bsky.social
February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Even tho I’ve already included a Tiya Miles book, Dawn of Detroit is SO good. Rethinking the times, places, & structures of slavery, this archival wonder never stops seeing individual lives thenewpress.com/books/dawn-o...
The cover of Tiya Miles’s book The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits. Roughly the top half of the cover features a color illustration of a very early view of Detroit with the title superimposed in white all caps, with “Detroit” in the largest font, “Dawn of,” slightly smaller, and “The,” still smaller. The author’s name—in black all caps—covers a bit of the clouds and sky at the top of the illustration. The bottom portion of the cover offers a light sepia-toned early map of part of the Detroit area. A white box with rounded edges covers the center of the map, and the book’s subtitle appears in the box in black all caps.
March 22, 2025 at 12:05 AM