Dr. Theodore R. Foster III

Dr. Theodore R. Foster III is a scholar trained in Black studies with expertise in U.S. Black Freedom Movement and Civil Rights Movement history, political theory, and Black visual culture. Dr. Foster is a native of Birmingham, Alabama where he earned his B.A. in African American Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He also holds an M.A. from Ohio State's Department of African American and African Studies and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University’s Black Studies department.

His research explores the contradictory ways we remember the U.S. Black Freedom and Modern Civil Rights Movements through iconic images, popular culture, museums, political campaigns, legal reforms, contemporary social and racial justice movements, social media, and Black cultural production by various Black artists such as Theaster Gates, Bethany Collins, and Dawoud Bey. He is completing a book manuscript based upon his dissertation research tentatively titled "The Firehose Next Time: Civil Rights Memory, Neoliberalism and Black Visual Culture."

Dr. Foster is the principal author of "A Map To Black Studies,” a 2022-2025 Guilbeau Charitable Trust grant of $101,000 to develop library collections in Black studies. Housed in the Ernest J. Gaines Center at UL Lafayette’s Edith Garland Dupré Library, this collaborative project involves programming and research opportunities for undergraduates, graduate students, staff, and faculty. Gaines Center Director Cheylon Woods and Library Specialist Jaime Bergeron created a libguide for the collection and work with Dr. Foster and Dr. Ian Beamish in the History department as well as Dr. Maria Seger in the English department to extend this project.

Most recently Dr. Foster published a short essay for the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 64 Parishes online encyclopedia and magazine exploring a significant 1961 U.S. Supreme Court civil rights case known as Garner v. Louisiana.