April 24, 2017

SVSU professor wins national award for book on post-Civil War black print

Eric Garnder, professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University, has won his second Book Prize from the Research Society of American Periodicals. The prize awards the best scholarly book on American periodicals published in 2015 and 2016.

Gardner received the honor for his community-minded scholarly work “Black Print Unbound: The Christian Recorder, African American Literature, and Periodical Culture.”

“Black Print Unbound” chronicles the development of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s newspaper, “The Christian Recorder,” during and just after the Civil War. The book was one of the first full-length studies of an early black newspaper.

As an exploration of a periodical created by African Americans for African Americans, Gardner’s book details the newspaper’s history, composition, publication, distribution, reception and place in American literary history. Gardner drafted the book with the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

A panel of three scholars chosen by the Research Society judged the books eligible for the prize. The prize committee said “Black Print Unbound” offers “magisterial vision and imaginative force that will set new standards for periodical scholarship.”

Gardner received the same award in 2010 for “Unexpected Places: Relocating Nineteenth Century African American Literature.” He will formally receive this year’s award at a ceremony at the American Literature Association’s annual conference in May in Boston.