Frances Smith Foster

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.

Early life and education Foster grew up in Dayton, Ohio. 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. Smith attended the all-black Wogaman Elementary School and graduated from Roosevelt High School. She has said that during her graduate studies in the 1970s she did not encounter the work of Black women scholars. She received her Ph.D. there in 1976. 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. She held Fellowships at Harvard University and Leiden University.

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.

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.

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. 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.

Selected works