Frances Smith Foster facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Frances Smith Foster
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Foster interviewed at Emory School of Law in 2012
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| Born | February 8, 1944 |
| Alma mater | University of California, San Diego University of Southern California Miami University |
| Children | 3 |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Emory University San Diego State University University of California, San Diego |
| Thesis | Slave narratives : text and social context (1976) |
Frances Smith Foster, born in 1944, is an American researcher and a retired professor. She is known for her work in African-American studies and women's history. She used to be a special professor of English and Women's Studies at Emory University.
Contents
Growing Up and School
Frances Smith Foster grew up in Dayton, Ohio. Her dad, Quinton Smith, was one of the first two Black bus drivers in the city. Her mom, Mabel Smith, was a beautician. Frances is the oldest of their five children. She went to Wogaman Elementary School and then graduated from Roosevelt High School.
College Studies
She went to Miami University for her first college degree, where she studied education. She earned special honors, showing she was a very good student. In 1971, she earned a master's degree from the University of Southern California.
After that, Foster moved to the University of California, San Diego. There, she worked on her doctorate degree in literature. She studied "slave narratives," which are stories written by people who were enslaved. She earned her Ph.D. in 1976. She has shared that during her studies in the 1970s, she didn't find many books or studies by Black women scholars.
Research and Career
Early in her career, Frances Foster became the leader of Black Students at San Diego State University. She worked hard to bring new ideas and studies to the academic world.
Studying Slave Narratives
In 1994, she published an important book called Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Antebellum Slave Narratives. This was the first book to deeply explore the style and meaning of slave literature. She showed how these stories were very important to African-American literature. They even influenced things like humor and irony in writing. The Modern Language Association said that Frances Foster proved slave narratives were a changing and powerful way for Black people to express themselves.
Focus on Black Women Writers
Foster also studied the writings of African-American women. She believed that Black women not only started the writing traditions for African Americans but also for all American women's literature.
In 1996, Foster joined Emory University. She became the Director of the Institute for Women's Studies there. She also helped create the 1997 Norton Anthology of African American Literature, which is a big collection of writings. She also received special study opportunities at Harvard University and Leiden University.
Foster was part of many groups for the Modern Language Association. These groups focused on different languages and literatures, including African-American literature.
Awards and Honors
Frances Smith Foster has received many important awards for her work.
- In 2009, she won the Francis Andrew March award.
- In 2010, she received the Hubbell Medal. Both of these awards came from the Modern Language Association. She was the first African-American woman to win such an award.
In 2011, she was given the Toby Gittler Prize from Brandeis University. This award recognized her great work in improving relationships between different racial, ethnic, and religious groups. That same year, she also received the Feminists Founders award from Emory University.
The next year, in 2012, a group called the Society for the Study of American Women Writers gave her the Karen Dandurand Lifetime Achievement Medal. She was the very first person to receive this special award.
Selected Works
- Witnessing Slavery: The Development of Antebellum Slave Narratives (1994)
- The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (contributor, 1997)
