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]
Research and career
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]
Awards and honors
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]
Selected works
Foster, Frances Smith (1944– ). (1994). Witnessing slavery: the development of ante-bellum slave narratives. The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN978-0-299-14214-8. OCLC985816329.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
Foster, Frances Smith. (1993). Written by herself literary production by African American women, 1746-1892. Indiana University Press. ISBN0-253-20786-X. OCLC1178676105.
Andrews, William L.; Frances Smith Foster; Trudier Harris, eds. (1997). The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-506510-7. OCLC35305158.
↑ Mathilda B. Canter, Recipient of the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Practice of Psychology, American Psychological Association (APA), 2002, doi:10.1037/e565682006-014
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
