Queer Places:
Rockford University, 5050 E State St, Rockford, IL 61108
University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637
Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Indiana University, 1165 E 3rd St, Bloomington, IN 47405
Chesser Cemetery, Noland, East Roanoke Township, AR 72455
Jeannette Howard Foster (November 3, 1895 – July 26, 1981) was an American
librarian, professor, poet, and researcher in the field of lesbian literature.
She pioneered the study of popular fiction and ephemera in order to excavate
both overt and covert lesbian themes. Her years of pioneering data collection
culminated in her 1956 study Sex Variant Women in Literature, which has
become a seminal resource in LGBT studies. Initially self-published by Foster
via Vantage Press, it was photoduplicated and reissued in 1975 by Diana Press
and reissued in 1985 by Naiad Press with updating additions and commentary by
Barbara Grier.
Jeannette Howard Foster was born on November 3, 1895 in Oak Park, Illinois,
daughter of mechanical engineer Winslow Howard Foster (b. January 10, 1869)
and Anna Mabel Burr. She attended Rockford College and graduated with a degree
in chemistry in 1918. Foster earned a Ph.D. at the Graduate Library School of
the University of Chicago. She taught library science at the Drexel Institute
of Technology from 1937 to 1948.[1]
She was librarian at the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University
during the years 1948 to 1952 where she worked with
Alfred Kinsey. She
eventually retired to Pocahontas, Arkansas with two other women.[2]
Howard was the recipient of the 1974 Stonewall Book Award for Sex Variant
Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey.[3]
She contributed fiction and reviews to The Ladder.
Foster lived to see her 1956 book hailed as a founding document of a new
area of scholarship. She was friends with
Valerie
Taylor and Marie Kuda, who founded the first national lesbian writers
conference in the United States. Taylor dedicated the first conference in 1974
to Foster.[4]
She had a romantic relationship spanning decades with
Clara
Louise Thompson,[5]
In 1998 Foster was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.[5]
In 2008, the first biography of Foster, Sex Variant Woman by Joanne
Passet, was published.[6]
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannette_Howard_Foster