Emory University Professor Emerita Frances Smith Foster was formally awarded this year’s Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize Tuesday, in Rapaporte Treasure Hall. As a co-recipient of the prize with Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson, Foster is an authority on African American family life and slavery narratives, and has published more than a dozen books on her research. Foster is a fellow of the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project at Brandeis, and of the Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory Law School, and is a past fellow at Harvard Divinity School and the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University.

The Gittler Prize, created by the late Professor Joseph B. Gittler, recognizes “outstanding and lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and/or religious relations,” according to its website. The recipient receives a medal and a cash prize of $25,000 at a reception and lecture on campus.