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Dr. Eckard is Professor of English and the Chair of the English Department at UNC Charlotte. 

Previously, she served as Director of American Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Graduate Liberal Studies (MALS).

Education

  • Ph.D. English, University of South Carolina
  • M.A., M.H.D.L., University of North Carolina at Charlotte
  • B.A., B.S.N., University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Areas of Interest

  • American literature and culture
  • Southern literature and culture
  • Maternal studies
  • Literature and medicine

Books

Thomas Wolfe and Lost Children in Southern Literature. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2016.

Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002.

Articles (selected)

  • “Queerness, Opioids, and Mountain Top Removal: The Politics of Destruction in The Evening Hour.” South Atlantic Review 83.3 (2018) 24-43.
  • “Lost Childhood in Southern Literature.” The Southern Quarterly 54.3-4: (2017). 75-93.
  • “Thomas Wolfe in Context: North Carolina Culture and the Digital World.” The Thomas Wolfe Review 39.1-2: 49-52.
  • “Thomas Wolfe and ‘the great engine’ of Johns Hopkins Hospital.” The Thomas Wolfe Review 37.1-2 (2013): 53-72. 
  • “Crossing Racial Boundaries in The Secret Life of Bees.” The South Carolina Review 45.2 (2013):  120-34.
  • “The Entombed Maternal in Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills.” Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters 35.3 (2012): 795-809.
  • “‘A Flash of Fire’: Illness and the Body in Look Homeward, Angel.”  The Thomas Wolfe Review 1-2.34 (2010): 6-24. Winner of the Zelda and Paul Gitlin Literary Prize for best scholarship published on Thomas Wolfe during 2010.
  • “Narrative, Work, and Grief in Thomas Wolfe’s The Lost Boy.”  The Thomas Wolfe Review 1-2.32 (2008): 7-21.
  • “Ellen Foster: Survival in the New South.” Five Owls 17.3 (2004): 61-63.
  • “What Lies Beneath: Myth, Memory, and Obsession” (Review essay of Prodigals by Mark Powell and Moon Women by Pamela Duncan). North Carolina Literary Review 12(2003): 137-140.
  • “The Conjure Woman.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. NY: Oxford UP, 1997.   167-68.
  • “Moody, Anne.”   The Oxford Companion to African American Literature.   Ed. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. NY: Oxford UP, 1997.   506-7.
  • “Terrell, Mary Church.”   The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. NY: Oxford UP, 1997. 718-19.
  • “Good Hearts : Immersed in Time.”   The South Carolina Review 28.2 (1996): 78-85.
  • “The Prismatic Past in Oral History and Mama Day .”   MELUS: Journal for Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 20.3 (1995): 121-135.
  • “The Interplay of Music, Language, and Narrative in Toni Morrison’s Jazz .” College Language Association Journal 38.1 (1994): 11-19.
  • “Maternal Mythologies and Southern Literature: An Essay to Honor Julian Mason.” Postscript 10 (1993): 25-34.   (Essay on Beloved by Toni Morrison)
  • “Grief, Work, and Narrative in Southern Fiction.” Society for the Study of Southern Literature Meeting, University of Alabama-Birmingham
  • “Memory, Landscape, and the Mother’s Body in Spence + Lila.”  Southern Women Writers Conference, Berry College, Mt. Berry, GA
  • “Mediating the Matriarchal/Patriarchal Dichotomy in Lee Smith’s Saving Grace.”  American Academy of Religion Southeastern Regional Conference, Knoxville, TN
  • “Feather Crowns : Commodifying Southern Motherhood.” Society for the Study of Southern Literature Meeting, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA
  • “Crossing Blood : Some Southern Dynamics of Race, Gender, and Language.”  Virginia Humanities Conference, Christopher Newport College, Newport News, VA

Current Projects

Medical Narratives of Thomas Wolfe

Courses Taught

  • North Carolina Writers
  • Major American Writers
  • Introduction to Poetry
  • Approaches to Literature
  • American Literature 1870-1920
  • American Literature 1920 to the Present
  • Nineteenth Century American Novel
  • Literature of the American South
  • Modern American Literature
  • Contemporary Southern Women Writers
  • 20th-21st Century Southern Novel
  • Growing Up Southern
  • Southern Folklore and Literature
  • Appalachian Literature and Culture

Professional Appointments

Selected Professional Service

  • Distinguished Service Director, Board of Directors, Thomas Wolfe Society, 2014-present.
  • Editor, The Thomas Wolfe Review, 2013-present.
  • President, Thomas Wolfe Society, 2011-2013.
  • Vice-President, Thomas Wolfe Society, 2009-2011.
  • Editorial service for North Carolina Literary Review; MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States; Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature; Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies; Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society; Studies in the Novel; University of Georgia Press; University of South Carolina Press; Ohio State University Press; and University of Missouri Press.

Selected Community Service

  • Member, Board of Directors, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF), Charlotte Chapter.
  • As JDRF Government Relations Chair, lobbied members of Congress for NIH funding for diabetes research, stem cell research, and other diabetes issues.
  • A primary lobbyist for NC Senate Bill 911, “Care for School Children with Diabetes Act,” which passed unanimously in both houses of the North Carolina legislature and was signed into state law in 2002. Senate Bill 911 / S.L. 2002-103