Why Can?t I Talk about Slavery?

Frances Smith Foster is an educator, writer, editor, and scholar.

Since 1994, Foster has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in African American literature at Emory University. She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and women's studies where her courses have focused on women's writings and the narratives of slaves, as well as the role of Afro-Protestantism in African American cultural life. Foster is a charter member of the Womanist Studies Consortium, an interracial affiliation of scholars that supports feminist research on women of color.

Foster has published Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892 and Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping and Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. She served as editor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature and The Oxford Companion to African American Literature.

030