Joe Lockard researches antislavery literature and human rights philosophies.

As associate professor of English in literature, his work areas include 19th and 20th-century American literature; African American literature, minority discourse, and comparative American ethnic literatures; censorship; the literatures of ‘race’ and nationalism; cultural studies; Internet culture and digital humanities; translation studies; and Jewish and modern Hebrew literature. In 2009, Lockard co-founded the Prison English project (now Prison Education Programming) and continues to teach a weekly poetry workshop at Florence State Prison. He teaches an undergraduate course in prison literature, recently published an edited volume titled Prison Pedagogies: Learning and Teaching with Prisoners (co-edited with Sherry Rankins-Robertson), and does research in this area.