Florence Howe

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Florence Howe, American author, publisher, literary scholar and historian, was a nationally recognised leader of the contemporary feminist movement.

Born in Brooklyn, New York on March 17, 1929, Florence was daughter to Samuel and Frances Stilly Rosenfeld. She loved learning from a young age, her mother being a bookkeeper. Frances encouraged her daughter to follow a teaching career.

In 1946, at age 16, Howe entered Hunter College High School, being only one of five young women from Brooklyn to do so. In 1949, she was raised to Phi Beta Cappa. 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, Howe entered Smith College and earned an MA in English in 1951.

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. How also founded the Feminist Press, which published its first book in 1972.

The Florence Howe Award for feminist scholarship is named in her honor.

[edit] Writings

Myths of coeducation : selected essays, 1964-1983, Bloomington, Ind : Indiana University Press, 1984
"Learning from Teaching" in: Florence Howe (ed.), Mari Jo Buhle (introduction), The Politics of Women's Studies: Testimony from Thirty Founding Mothers, Paperback edition, New York: Feminist Press 2001, pp. 3-15