Frances Smith Foster
Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women's Studies
ffoster@emory.edu

Frances Smith Foster is Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women’s Studies and Associated Faculty in African American Studies and in American Studies. Her course offerings have ranged from undergraduate seminars such as “Becoming a Woman” and “Slavery and the African American Literary Imagination” to upper division courses such as “African American Prize-Winning and Prize Worthy Literature” and “(W)right Things Right in Nineteenth Century African American Literature” to graduate seminars such as “Family, Marriage and Sexual Morality in Early African America,” “African American Literary Theories and Practices,” and “Provocations: USAmerican Women Writing.”

Professor Foster has authored or edited ten books and numerous articles. Among her most recent publications are “Race, Region and the Politics of Slavery’s Memory,” “African Americans, Literature, and the Nineteenth Century Afro-Protestant Press,” Written By Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892, and Behind the Scenes (edited with extensive introduction). Her co-editing projects include Norton Critical Edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (with Nellie Y. McKay), Norton Anthology of African American Literature (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Nellie Y. McKay, et al), and Oxford Companion to African American Literature (with William L. Andrews and Trudier Harris).

Her current research centers around Feminist Sexual Ethics, Antebellum African American Families and Religion, and Best Sellers and Literary Societies.

Selected Publications
Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Norton Critical Edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. (with Nellie Y. McKay)

The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Nellie McKay, et al.)

Oxford Companion to African American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. (with William L. Andrews and Trudier Harris)

Recent Women's Studies courses taught:
Becoming a Woman (undergraduate)
Studies in 19th Century American Literature (graduate)