Frances Smith Foster

Foster grew up in Dayton, Ohio.[1] Her parents were Quinton Smith, a truck driver and Mabel Smith (née Gullette), a beautician. They had four other 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 the 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 that “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 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]

• Foster, Frances Smith (1944- ). (1994). Witnessing slavery : the development of ante-bellum slave narratives. The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-14214-8. OCLC 985816329.
• Foster, Frances Smith. (1993). Written by herself literary production by African American women, 1746-1892. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20786-X. OCLC 1178676105.
• Frances Smith, Frances Smith (1997). The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506510-7. OCLC 35305158.