A Tribute to Frances Smith Foster

I should not have been incredulous, although I was, when I recently asked Professor Emerita Frances Smith Foster about the activities of her retirement, and she reported that she has been busy writing A Very Short Introduction to African American Literature. For Foster has authored, edited, or coedited fourteen books and dozens, perhaps hundreds, of significant shorter scholarly works. Early in her career she served as a chair of black studies, an assistant dean, and an associate in the Chancellor's Office at San Diego State University. At Emory University she directed the Institute for Women's Studies while also functioning until retirement as Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women's Studies.

At the outset of her career, Foster's publications included a review of To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865 by William L. Andrews, together with his edited volume Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century, for the New York Times Book Review. That review showcases Foster's famous wry, often stinging wit from the first paragraph, as she muses on the popularity of hard-luck stories: "A simple and sincere account of failure can win hearts" ("Troubles They Saw" 10). Notably, the review closes with Foster's observation that Andrews's Sisters is a reliable and "accurate" collection of reprints, although not a facsimile edition (11). In other words, Foster's earliest scholarship reveals her career-long interest in black print culture studies and pays keen attention to comprehensive contexts of black texts wherever possible. One vital Foster lesson is that texts possess no extraneous features: Paratexts, contexts, and texts all matter. Also apparent in her review is her steadfast devotion to the integrity of impeccable scholarship over careerism. Her frank assessment of Andrews's books, whatever the two scholars' relationship before the review, no doubt informed the respect evident in their groundbreaking collaborations since, which have included the Norton Anthology of African American Literature and the Oxford Companion to African American Literature.

Among the most enduring themes in Foster's research and scholarship is the notion of tradition. Constantly, Foster works to discern intertextuality, patterns, and linkages in all manner of African American literature; her writings investigate how black literary and cultural traditions are constructed and maintained. Devoted to establishing and expanding black literary traditions, Foster calls for ongoing expansion of black literary canons. She recalls that, as a graduate student, she "was quick to denounce and to try to dismantle traditions, institutions, and ordinances that relegated some groups to inferior positions and others to superior merely because of their color, contour, or country of origin" ("Personal Is Political" 29). As a mature scholar, she cites an enduring problem with so-called tradition to be its proclivity to close off borders and erect boundaries—that is, to contain and exclude. Her participation in the behemoth canon-building project the Norton Anthology of African American Literature would seem to implicate her in exclusionary movements. Yet to this day, she demands vigilant attention to recuperating documents that challenge claims to first, originary, primary spaces and positions of authority in black literature.

Foster's allegiance to African Americans cannot be separated from her commitment to women and women's struggles. As Foster recalls in "The Personal Is Political, the Past Has Potential, and Other Thoughts on Studying Women's Literature—Then and Now," her 1970s graduate student days were devoid of instruction in black women's writings until "[t]he academy was besieged by the excluded" (31). She joined forces with diverse groups to break open spaces for an inclusive curriculum based on, ironically, "affirmations and mantras" she had learned in a segregated northern, urban black community about standing tall, proud, black, beautiful, gifted, and confident (30). Thirty-odd years later, Foster's exultant "praise song" Still Brave: The Evolution of Black Women's Studies, coedited with Stanlie M. James and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, more than updated and celebrated its predecessor, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's...