Frances Smith Foster (born 1944) is an American researcher and emeritus Professor of African-American studies and women's history. She has previously served as the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women's Studies at Emory University.
Foster grew up in Dayton, Ohio.[1] Her parents were Quinton Smith, one of the 2 first Black bus drivers in the city and Mabel Smith (née Gullette), a beautician. Frances is the oldest of their five children.[2] Smith attended the all-black Wogaman Elementary School and graduated from Roosevelt High School.[2]
She earned her bachelor's degree at Miami University, where she studied education. She made Phi Beta Kappa and graduated cum laude.[2] She earned a master's degree at the University of Southern California in 1971.[2] After graduating Foster moved to the University of California, San Diego, where she investigated slave narratives as part of a doctoral programme in British and American literature.[3] She has said that during her graduate studies in the 1970s she did not encounter the work of Black women scholars.[4][5] She received her Ph.D. there in 1976.[2]
In the early days of her academic career, Foster was appointed as the Chair of Black Students at San Diego State University.[4] In 1994, she published Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Antebellum Slave Narratives, which was the first text to explore the genre of slave literature. She has argued that African-American literature owes a considerable amount to slave narratives; including humour, irony and the creation of the protagonist character of "The Heroic Slave".[6] The Modern Language Association has said: "Frances proved that the slave narrative was a dynamic and ever-evolving genre of black self-expression." She also studied the literary contributions of African-American women, arguing that Black women not only founded the literary traditions of African Americans but that of all American women's literature.[6] When Foster joined Emory University in 1996, she became Director of the Institute for Women's Studies.[4] She contributed to the 1997 Norton Anthology of African American Literature.[7] She held Fellowships at Harvard University and Leiden University.[8]
Foster served on various committees for the Modern Language Association, including the Division of Ethnic Languages and Literatures, Afro-American Literature Discussion Group and executive committee.[9]
In 2009, Foster was awarded the Francis Andrew March award and in 2010 the Hubbell Medal, both of the Modern Language Association.[9] She was the first African-American woman to win such an award.[10]
In 2011, she was awarded the Brandeis University Toby Gittler Prize "for outstanding and lasting contributions to racial, ethnic and religious relations", and the Emory University Feminists Founders award.[11][12] The following year, the Society for the Study of American Women Writers announced that Foster was the inaugural winner of the Karen Dandurand Lifetime Achievement Medal.[13]
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