Florence Howe

Florence Howe
Born	Florence Rosenfeld March 17, 1929 Brooklyn, New York
Academic background
Alma mater	Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts
Academic work
Main interests	Feminist author, publisher, literary scholar and historian

Florence Rosenfeld Howe (born March 17, 1929), is an American author, publisher, literary scholar and historian who is considered a leader of the contemporary feminist movement.^[1]

Early life

Born in Brooklyn, New York on March 17, 1929,^[2] Florence was the daughter of Samuel and Frances Stilly Rosenfeld. Florence loved learning from a young age. Her mother, Frances, a bookkeeper, encouraged her daughter to follow a teaching career.^[1]

Education

In 1946, at age 16, Howe entered Hunter College High School. She was one of only five young women from Brooklyn to do so. In 1949, she was awarded entrance to Phi Beta Kappa, the elite academic organization which commends superlative academic achievement. Various people in power encouraged her to take graduate courses in literature and to become a college professor. After receiving a BA in English in 1950 from Hunter College, Howe entered Smith College and earned an MA in English in 1951.^[1] She was awarded an honorary doctorate by DePauw University in 1987.^[3]

Career

She taught black children in a Mississippi freedom school during 1964 and chaired the Modern Language Association commission on the Status of Women in the Profession. In 1967, she signed a public statement declaring her intention to refuse to pay income taxes in protest against the U.S. war against Vietnam.^[4] Howe also founded The Feminist Press in 1970,^[5] "an educational nonprofit organization founded to advance women's rights and amplify feminist perspectives",^[6] the organization had published three books by 1973.^[7]

The Florence Howe Award

The Florence Howe Award for feminist scholarship of the Women's Caucus for the Modern Languages is named in her honor.^[8]

Selected bibliography

Books

• Howe, Florence; Ahlum, Carol (1970). Female studies: collected by the Commission on the Status of Women of the Modern Language Association. Pittsburgh: Know Inc. ISBN 9780912786025.
• Howe, Florence; Lauter, Paul (1970). The conspiracy of the young. New York: World Publishing Co. OCLC 106506.
• Howe, Florence (1993) [1973]. No more masks!: an anthology of twentieth-century American women poets. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 9780060552626.
• Howe, Florence (1975). Women and the power to change. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 9780070101241.
• Howe, Florence (1977). Seven years later: women's studies programs in 1976: a report of the National Advisory Council on Women's Educational Programs. Washington D.C.: National Advisory Council on Women's Educational Programs. OCLC 4188651.
• Howe, Florence; Lauter, Paul (1978). The women's movement: impact on the campus and curriculum. Washington D.C.: American Association for Higher Education. OCLC 4261912.
• Howe, Florence; Hoffman, Nancy (1979). Women working: an anthology of stories and poems. Old Westbury, New York: The Feminist Press. ISBN 9780912670577.
• Howe, Florence; Lauter, Paul (1980). The impact of women's studies on the campus and the disciplines. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, National Institute of Education, Program on Teaching and Learning. OCLC 6766027.
• Howe, Florence; Howard, Suzanne; Boehm Strauss, Mary Jo (1982). Everywoman's guide to colleges and universities: an educational project of the Feminist Press. Old Westbury, New York: The Feminist Press. ISBN 9780935312096.
• Howe, Florence (1984). Myths of coeducation: selected essays, 1964-1983. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253203397.
• Howe, Florence; Saxton, Marsha (1987). With wings: an anthology of literature by and about women with disabilities. New York: The Feminist Press. ISBN 9780935312614.
• Howe, Florence; Faragher, John Mack (1988). Women and higher education in American history: essays from the Mount Holyoke College Sesquicentennial Symposia. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393025019.
• Howe, Florence (1991). Tradition and the talents of women. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252016851.
• Howe, Florence; Casella, Jean (2000). Almost touching the skies: women's coming of age stories. New York: The Feminist Press. ISBN 9781558612341. 30th anniversary edition.
• Howe, Florence (2000). The politics of women's studies: testimony from thirty founding mothers. New York: The Feminist Press. ISBN 9781558612419. Introduction by Mari Jo Buhle
• Howe, Florence (2011). A life in motion. New York: The Feminist Press. ISBN 9781558616974.

Chapters in books

• Howe, Florence (2000), "Learning from teaching", in Howe, Florence, The politics of women's studies: testimony from thirty founding mothers, New York: The Feminist Press, pp. 3–15, ISBN 9781558612419. Introduction by Mari Jo Buhle

Other

She contributed the piece "The Proper Study of Womankind: Women's Studies" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.^[9]

References

1. "Gale Encyclopedia of Biography: Florence Rosenfeld Howe". biography.yourdictionary.com. The Gale Group. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
2. "Howe, Florence". Library of Congress. Retrieved 9 March 2015. CIP data sheet (b. 3/17/29)
3. http://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/details/31788/
4. "Newspaper clipping of open letter to the U.S. War Committee, 11 March 1967". Letter to Mr. W. Walter Boyd from Herbert Sonthoff, March 28, 1967 (archive pdf). Penn State University Libraries: Horowitz Transaction Publishers Archive. 28 March 1967. p. 4. No income tax for war! Now particularly the U.S. war in Vietnam. STATEMENT: Because so much of the tax paid the federal government goes for poisoning food crops, blasting of villages, napalming and killing of thousands upon thousands of people, as in Vietnam at the present time, I am not going to pay taxes on 1966 income.
5. "Authors: Florence Howe". feministpress.org. The Feminist Press at City University of New York. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
6. "About FP". feministpress.org. The Feminist Press at City University of New York. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
7. Howe, Florence (July 2014). "Lost and found – and what happened next: some reflections on the search for women writers begun by The Feminist Press in 1970". Contemporary Women's Writing, special issue: The Body. Oxford Journals. 8 (2): 136–153. doi:10.1093/cww/vpt022.
8. Glasgow, Joanne; Ingram, Angela (1990). Courage and tools: the Florence Howe Award for Feminist Scholarship, 1974-1989. New York: Modern Language Association of America. ISBN 9780873523455.
9. "Library Resource Finder: Table of Contents for: Sisterhood is forever : the women's anth". Vufind.carli.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2015-10-15.

External links

• Florence Howe's Website
• Feminist Press
• Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution from the Jewish Women's Archive

Secondary sources

• The MLA commission on women and the women's caucus for the modern languages.